
Class ^^ 
Book_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOStr. 



HISTORY 



OF 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 



BY 

JAMES Q. HOWARD 



CHICAGO 

CALLAGHAN & COMPANY 
1902 



THE l.iaRAHV OF 

CONGRESS, 
"I'wo CoPttr Rtosiveo 

SEP. 25 1902 

Ci.ASS «-XXc No. 
COPY 8. 



Copyright 1903 

BY 

CALLAGHAN & COMPANY 



c\ 



v9 



I As 
ii 



^s;^ 



TO ETHEL HOWARD, 

A grateful recognition is due for reflecting a radiant joy upon 
one life that may prove a benediction to others than the author 
of her beings and of this book. 

Lotos Club, New York, 
August 17, 1902 



PREFATORY OBSERVATIONS. 



This History of the Louisiana Purchase was 
written prior to a work on the same subject by Mr. 
J. K. Hosmer. The latter being essentially a work 
of fiction, but faintly historical, in no way conflicts 
with this relation of fact which has gone forth with 
the approval of the Exposition Company at St. 
Louis. The early history of the vast domain trans- 
ferred by France to the United States in 1803 is 
found in the Margry papers, in the other official or 
personal accounts of the first explorers and settlers, 
and in various cotemporarj^ records and writings. 
The American State Papers, the archives of the 
Department of State, the acts and utterances of 
public men, best make known what took place at the 
time of the actual acquisition of Louisiana. These 
sources of infonnation having been examined, 
long lists of references and authorities need not 
burden a condensed account of our first peaceful 
expansion of territory. 

James Q. Howaed. 

Washington, August 6, 1902. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER I. 
The Louisiana Eegion Prior to the Year 1700. 
De Narvaez, De Soto, Joliet and Marquette, La 

Salle "^ 

CHAPTEE II. 

The Louisiana Dominion. 

Period of Settlement and Transition— From 1700 to 

Peace Treaty of 1783 . ., 18 

CHAPTER III. 

Reaching to the Mississippi. 

Great Treaties of 1782-3— Who Made Them 34 

CHAPTER IV. 
The Critical Period of Spanish Rule in Louisiana. 
From 1784 to 1789 — Disturbed Relations with the 

West 48 

CHAPTER V. 

The First President. 

Steps to Secure Free Navigation — This Great Gov- 
ernment's Real Beginning 62 

CHAPTER VI. 

Washington's Second Term. 

Louisiana from March, 1793, to 1797— Young Nation 

Beset by Enemies 74 

6 



6 CONTENTS 

CHAPTER YII. 

Louisiana During the Term of John Adams. 

Foresight of Hamilton — More Trouble with Spain — 

St. Louis Serence 83 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Louisiana During the Years 1801 and 1802. 

Transfer from Spain to France — ^Livingston, Napo- 
leon, Jefferson, Madison 94 

CHAPTER IX. 

The Great Treaty of April 30, 1803. 

The Correspondence Preceding It — Who Made It. . 106 

CHAPTER X. 

Echoes of the Great Treaty. 

Bonaparte's Motives for Selling Louisiana — His 

Prophecies — How Acquisition Was Received. ... 117 

CHAPTER XL 

Louisiana Purchase States. 
Conditions in 1803 and 1900 Contrasted 12G 

SUPPLEMENTAL. 

Creators and Preservers of the Republic 142 

Foremost Patriots and Benefactors — 

Washington 143 

Hamilton 145 

Lincoln 147 

Franklin 149 

Marshall 151 

Webster 153 

Grant 155 

Livingston 157 

Jackson 159 



HISTORY 

OF THE 



LOUSIANA PURCHASE 



CHAPTER I. 



THE LOUISIANA REGION PRIOR TO THE 
YEAR 1700. 

DE NARVAEZ, DE SOTO, JOLIET AND MARQUETTE, 
LA SALLE. 

TO KNOW the history of the Louisiaua 
Purchase, we must know the prior his- 
tory of the territoiy purchased. Who dis- 
covered and explored this vast domain? 
Who settled and developed it! Who exercised 
sovereignty and established political governments 
over it? are questions to be considered and an- 
swered. 

The first European commissioned to exercise any 
legitimate authority over any part of this terri- 
tory was the ill-foi-tuned Spanish officer, Narvaez. 
Panfilo de Narvaez was fourteen, when Columbus 
discovered the West Indies. He was born where 
the great navigator died-at Valladolid. As sec- 
ond in command to Velasquez, who had conquered 
Cuba, he was sent to supersede the indomitable 



8 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Cortez, who bad conquered Mexico. Cortez gave 
his would-be successor defeat with a blind eye, 
and incorporated the invading army in his own. 
The partial blindness of this representative of 
royal authority seems to have characterized all 
colonizing Spaniards since, until the climax of 
total blindness was reached in 1800, through the 
profitless transfer to France of an empire larger 
than that of Charlemagne. For his early exploits 
in Cuba, the one-eyed hero, NaiTaez, was made 
second governor of Florida, with authoritj'' ex- 
tending definitely beyond the present state of 
Louisiana and indefinitely over all the forests, 
rivers, swamps and savages he could conquer. 
The Indians and alligators came off victorious, 
and Narvaez perished miserably at the mouth of 
the Mississippi in vessels that were not seaworthy. 

DE SOTO. 

Four men survived of four hundred, and there- 
by hangs a tale of woe and glory. These survivors 
were the first white men to cross the Mississippi 
and the American continent. Cabeza de Vaca, one 
of the four, who reached Spain by the way of New 
Mexico, became the historian of his own wander- 
ings. De Vaca's glowing oral accounts of the Rio 
del Oro and of wonderful regions and cities, fired 
the ambition of Hernando de Soto, who had 
gained wealth and distinction under the renowned 
Pizarro in the conquest of Peru. Having won the 
hand of his chieftain's daughter, De Soto sought 



THE LOUISIANA REGION 9 

and obtained the governorship of Cuba, He pro- 
posed to his sovereign, Charles V, to conquer 
Florida at his own expense. The restless, the am- 
bitious, the avaricious and even the settled owners 
of vineyards and olive groves, sold all to follow 
the Peruvian hero. The nobility and aristocracy 
of Spain made a mad rush for gold and became 
the discoverers of the Mississippi. Having left 
his wife, the daughter of Pizarro, to govern Cuba, 
De Soto sailed away to his own destruction and 
that of five hundred of his followers, as if he were 
gaily maneuvering in a holiday naval parade. 
Chains for captives and bloodhounds for fleeing 
aborigines, were parts of an unwise and imperfect 
equipment of the third Spanish expedition into 
the interior of Florida. Landing on the west 
coast, these high-born adventurers turned towards 
Appalachee Bay; thence westward to Pensacola 
Bay. After wandering over what are now Georgia 
and Alabama, De Soto returned to the present 
site of Mobile, where he destroyed a large Indian 
town, slaughtering more than two thousand of its 
inhabitants. Pursuing the foolish policy of treat- 
ing all Indian tribes as enemies, the new governor 
was soon in an unending conflict with his new sub- 
jects. One he ordered burned alive for bluntly 
declaring that he knew of no country where gold 
abounded. Thenceforward compulsory guides 
promptly manufactured the information de- 
manded. Then they were thrown to the blood- 
hounds for misleading the gold hunters. Receiv- 
ing supplies from Cuba, the haughty De Soto, 



10 TEE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

regardless of failure, marched northwest to and 
across the Yazoo Kiver. Near this "river of 
death" their winter quarters were burned, their 
food, shelter and clothing being wholly destroyed. 
It was while moving westward, clothed in skins 
of animals and in mats made of rushes and wild 
ivy, that these starving Dons first beheld the 
majestic Mississippi. Powell's painting of this 
beggarly scene does great credit to that artist's 
wealth of invention. The point of discovery was 
near the thirty-fifth parallel, now known as the 
lowest Chickasaw Bluff. In May, 1541, the ex- 
ploring part}^ crossed the Great River of Florida, 
as the Spaniards first called it, and ascending the 
west bank and branching off northwest, reached 
the upper waters of the White River, about two 
hundred miles from the Great River. From just 
above the State line of Missouri, the extreme 
northern limit of De Soto's explorations, the 
party crossed the Arkansas to the salt waters of 
the Washita, and descending along that stream 
returned to the Mississippi at the junction of Red 
River. Broken down by malarial fevers and dis- 
heartened by his inability to penetrate the forests 
and marshes of the lower Mississippi, De Soto 
calmly prepared for his departure to another and 
still stranger world. He called his chiefs around 
him at the last hour and selected Moscoso as his 
successor. He was first buried within the enclo- 
sure of the encampment, but later his followers, 
fearing that ill consequences might flow from the 
knowledge of his mortality and death, his body 



TEE LOUISIANA REGION 11 

was heavily weighted and sunk at midnight in the 
deep water channel of what seemed to be a great 
flowing inland sea. A fitting burial place truly 
for a relentless chieftain whose cruelties were re- 
volting, who was as pitiless and merciless as the 
devastating torrents of a river that destroys babes 
in their cradles and drags children from their 
mother's arms. De Soto died May 21, 1542, and 
Moscoso returned by the way of Texas and Mex- 
ico to Spain with less than one-third of the gay 
naval expedition that set out from Havana nearly 
two years before. 

JOLIET AND MAKQUETTE. 

More than a century and a quarter had elapsed 
from the time when the half-starved Spaniards 
fled from the lower Mississippi, to the year when 
the Frenchmen, Joliet and Marquette, appeared 
upon its upper waters. These experienced explor- 
ers, with a party of seven, starting from Mack- 
inaw in two birch canoes, ascended Fox River and 
connected by a narrow portage with the upper 
Wisconsin. Floating down the latter, the beauty 
of the shores of which impressed them much, they 
entered the Father of Waters on the current of 
the Wisconsin, June 17, 1673. They descended 
the great river for a thousand miles. Exploring, 
they seemed much impressed by the frightful 
appearance of the monsters painted in red, blue 
and green colors, that disfigured certain high cliffs 
below the mouth of the Illinois. Pursuing the 



12 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

humane and wise ix)licy of kindness and frank- 
ness, the chiefs of the Illinois Indians received 
Joliet and Marquette in their native and naked 
dignity, smoking the calumet of peac^, and declar- 
ing with inborn grace, that their presence ''made 
the river more calm, the sky more serene and the 
earth more beautiful." They passed the lonely 
forest that covered the site of the now busy and 
opulent city of St. Louis, and later, saw on their 
left the stream to which the Iroquois had given 
the name of the Ohio or Beautiful River. The 
whole of the name and parts of the river have 
remained beautiful. Having successfully explored 
the Mississippi to the Arkansas, some six hun- 
dred miles from its mouth, the discoverers accom- 
plished a perilous but safe return, having been 
absent from civilization just four months. 

Joliet, although tlie son of a Quebec wagon- 
maker, was an enterprising trader, a brave, keen- 
eyed explorer and an honorable man. Unfortu- 
nately for his fame and fortune he lost in tlie 
Lachine Rapids on his return, within sight of 
home, his papers containing the histoiy of his dis- 
coveries, Indian relics, in short, everything but 
life. 

Pere Marquette was born in the picturesque 
cathedral town of Laon, in France. A Jesuit with- 
out guile, he was the spiritual guide and life of 
the expedition. As self-denying a soul as ever 
gave up life for humanity and God, he passed to 
his eternal reward in May, 1675, observing all the 
rites of his church and murmuring the names of 



THE LOUISIANA REGION 13 

Jesus and Mary, while calmly expiring in tlie 
solitude of the wilderness. A year later the 
Ottawas, among whom the pious and loving mis- 
sionary had long labored, tenderly bore his re- 
mains in a casket of birch from near the promon- 
tory of Sleeping Bear, where they rested, to the 
sacred church of Saint Ignace. As they solemnly 
approached the mission in thirty canoes, chanting 
their death songs, a vast multitude of Indians, 
traders and missionaries thronged the shores, 
looking on the strange spectacle in mute and 
reverential awe. To this day, it is said, that storm- 
tossed mariners on Lake Michigan, in the hour of 
darkest and most dreadful peril, invoke on their 
knees the prayerful intercession of the sainted 
Marquette. This Christian martyr has been hon- 
ored by a noble statue in the American pantheon 
at our national capital, contributed by Wisconsin. 

STEDR DE LA SALLE. 

The greatest of the early explorers cannot be 
followed through his northern lake and Canadian 
successes and failures; his quarrels with the 
Jesuits and his other distressing tribulations. It 
is enough to know that his merits won the con- 
fidence and unvarying support of Count Fron- 
tenac, the ablest of all the early French governors, 
and that the illustrious Colbert and the worldly- 
wise Louis XIV were the chief promoters of his 
far-reaching discoveries. Bom of good family in 
Rouen, he came to Canada at twenty-three, with a 



14 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

splendid physique, an excellent education, high 
ideals and high ambitions. Among the fruits 
of a first voyage was the exploration of hake On- 
tario, the discover}^ of the Illinois River, and a 
visit to the Ohio River and to the present site 
of Chicago. From the second expedition resulted 
the first sight and first description of Niagara 
Falls by Father Hennepin, one of La Salle's 
party; the building of the "Griffon" in 1679, on 
Niagara River ; the exploration of the lakes as far 
as Detroit in this first of all lake-sailing vessels; 
the traversing of the upper lakes and penetration 
of the interior of the Illinois country, where Fort 
Crevecoeur was built, and the intrepid explorer's 
final triumph over all obstacles and enemies in 
reaching the Mississippi by descending the River 
Illinois. La Salle tells us that he was detained at 
the mouth of the Illinois for twelve days, by float- 
ing ice; that in February, 1682, he found himself 
moving down the might^^ current of the River 
*' Colbert," as he named it, made more might}' by 
the muddy, mad-rushing Missouri ; that the coun- 
try between the latter river and the Ohio, he 
declares in simplest French, was beautiful; that 
game abounded near where we know De Soto 
crossed ; that the savages were hostile between the 
mouth of the Arkansas and junction of Red River, 
and that early in April, the parting forks of the 
wonderful river were before his delighted eyes. 
On April 9, 1682, La Salle and his then faithful 
followers, having passed out through the three 
channels of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mex- 



THE LOUISIANA REGION 15 

ico, effected a joint landing, and tliere planting 
the holy cross,, proclaimed the divinity of their 
religion and the sovereignty of their country, "in 
the name of the most high, mighty, invincible and 
victorious Prince Louis the Great, by the grace 
of God, King of France and of Navarre. ' ' Shouts 
of "Long live the king!" and three volleys of 
musketry confirmed an acquisition or grant of 
stupendous, though unmeasured, magnitude to 
Louis XIV, the then most powerful monarch in 
the world. The successful explorer named the 
whole vast region, extending to Canada and to the 
great tributaries northwest, Louisiana, in honor of 
its new sovereign. 

In 1684, the ever-friendly Frontenac having 
been recalled, and the large-minded Colbert hav- 
ing died, the indomitable La Salle betook himself 
to the court of Versailles, where his significant 
services, his worth, weight and dignity of char- 
acter secured a favorable response to his praise- 
worthy petition and lofty prayer. 

The minister of marine and colonies, Seigue- 
lay, the son of Colbert, agreed to fit out an expedi- 
tion to proceed by sea to the mouth of the Missis- 
sippi, for no less grand a purpose than to lay the 
foundation of a great empire. The resolute 
La Salle purposed to establish a fort and a colony, 
sixty leagues above the mouth of the mighty rivei', 
from which the French could control the settle- 
ment of a continent and eventually drive the 
Spaniards from Mexico. He was given four ves- 
sels to be commanded "while at sea" b}^ Beaujeu, 



16 TEE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

a captain of the nav>^, who was so consumed with 
conceit that the ceaseless recognition of his own 
importance appeared more essential to him than 
the success of the exj^edition. Through the in- 
capacity or the deception of Beaujeu, the colonists 
were landed at Metagorda Bay, one hundred and 
thirty leagues west of their destination. From 
this blunder followed no end of disasters. A 
landing place in the wilds of Texas was a wholly 
ditferent thing from a settlement on the banks of 
a grand continental river. The martinet of tlie 
royal navy hastily returned to France, taking 
what was most useful to the colonists with him. 
The abandoned settlers were reduced to desperate 
straits. La Salle and his colony, while suffering 
from malarial fevers, from lack of food and from 
all the perils and privations of the wilderness, 
resolved in March, 1687, as a last hope, to seek 
succor from the remote outposts near the northern 
lakes. Some progress had been made in this dan- 
gerous direction, when a hunter's quarrel, result- 
ing in the killing of Morenger, La Salle's nephew, 
precipitated a conspiracy, which ended in the 
assassination of the intrepid leader of the expedi- 
tion. 

Here, on a branch of the placid Trinity Eiver, 
beyond the restraints of civilization, a wi'etch 
named Larchveque, lures under the guns of Duhaut 
and Liotot, two other despicable miscreants lying 
in wait in the reeds, the unsuspecting survivor of a 
thousand jierils and storms; two shots ring out in 
the dead silence of the wilderness and the daunt- 



THE LOUISIANA REGION 17 

less discoverer drops speechless at the call of 
death! What a scene for some immortal limner! 
The stern, flushed face of La Salle, still illumi- 
nated with the light of a unique nobility ; the faith- 
ful friar, Anastase, standing appalled at the 
enomiity of the crime perpetrated before his own 
eyes, and the three miserable murderers exulting 
over and insulting the unconscious victim of their 
abhorrent treachery ! If an}^ statue is to be erected 
to any of the earlier discoverers of the broad 
domain embraced in the Louisiana Purchase, that 
honor is due to the fearless La Salle. His was the 
first broad mind to grasp the grandeur of the 
great northwest and its mighty outlet to the sea; 
he it was that moved Frontenac, Colbert and Louis 
XIV to action; he lived a life of toil, peril, 
obloquy and privation to the extreme limit of 
human endurance ; he suffered untold wrongs and 
injustice while living, and gave up his life to 
demonstrate the priceless value of America to his 
country and to mankind ! Let us honor unhonored 
greatness. 



CHAPTER II. 
THE LOUISIANA D0:MINI0N. 

PEEIOD OF SETTLEMENT AND TRANSITION — FEOM 1700 
TO PEACE TREATY OF 1782. 



A 



MOST meritorious historic character, whose 
sei-^dces lapi)ed over from the seventeenth 
century to the eighteenth, was the chival- 
rous and indefatigable Henry de Tonty. 
In all of La Salle's early trials, De Tonty of the 
"Iron Hand" was the great explorer's most loyal 
lieutenant and truest friend. He was left in com- 
mand of Fort St. Louis and Fort Broken Heart 
at different periods of uncommon peril. He ac- 
companied La Salle on his first great expedition 
down the Mississippi and was ever ready to follow 
or to lead wherever dangers were greatest or 
savages most fiercely hostile. In 1685 and again 
in 1689, he led a relief party to aid his illus- 
trious chief, from whom no tidings could be heard, 
traversing in all more than six thousand miles of 
swollen rivers and trackless wilderness and en- 
countering privations and ]:>erils which no lan- 
guage can make known. Searching in vain 
through what is now Arkansas, Texas and Louis- 
iana for traces of his loved and lost leader, he left 
on the lower Mississijipi a letter car\^ed on bark 
which fourteen years after, satisfied the doubting 

18 



THE LOUISIANA DOMINION 19 

Iberville that he was really on the mighty Colbert 
River of La Salle. This ''speaking bark," as the 
Indians reverently called it, as a memento of a 
deathless devotion, of an unending fidelity to a 
noble friendship, may be remembered by all who 
are losing faith in hmnan nature and their hearts 
thereby be abundantly comforted. This precious 
epistle ends: "It is a great sorrow to me that we 
must return under the misfortune of not having 
found you, after two canoes have skirted the coast 
of Mexico for thirty leagues and the coast of 
Florida for twenty-five." This brave explorer 
and truthful historian, having later joined the 
Louisiana colonists, was cut off by contagion while 
prosecuting his dangerous pioneer labors. He 
died at Mobile in 1704. 

FIRST PERMANENT SETTLEMENTS. 

From 1682 and after, La Salle, Joutel, Henne- 
pin and others, named the vast region watered by 
the Mississippi and its tributaries, Louisiana, in 
honor of their august sovereign, Louis XIV. But 
as the part almost wholly west of the great river, 
covered by the Purchase Treaty of 1803, now con- 
cerns us, let us turn to small, acorn-like beginnings 
of an empire from which the giant oaks of an 
unequaled development have grown. Historians 
tell us that the grand monarque of France took 
a great personal interest in his American colonies. 
He learned through De Eemonville, a close friend 
of La Salle, that the Louisiana countiy contained 



20 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

rich deposits of iron, lead and copper ; that hemp 
was indigenous, ship timber abundant and that 
cotton and tobacco could be cultivated. Le Moyue 
D 'Ibei'ville, a naval officer, who had gained dis- 
tinction through militaiy exploits on Hudson's 
Bay, on the Atlantic and in the valley of the St. 
Lawrence, was accordingly dispatr^hed to the 
mouth of the Mississippi, where he arrived in 1699. 
Count de Ponchartrain, then Minister of Marine 
and Colonies, declares in his official correspond- 
ence, found in the ^Margry papers, that the pur- 
pose of the expedition was to explore, to fortify 
and to prevent other nations from getting a foot- 
hold in Louisiana. Ibenille first went ashore at 
an island on which he saw a mass of human bones, 
and from this called it Massacre Island. It was 
what is now named Dauphin. The colony next 
landed and began to erect huts on Ship Island. 
They passed to the mainland through Pascagoula 
Bay. The Biloxi Indians were the first natives 
they encountered. They ran away at first, but 
were brought back by presents and the pleading of 
an Indian girl. On February 27, Iberville and his 
brother, Bienville, in well-equipped open boats, 
went in search of the Mississippi. They had pro- 
ceeded nearly two hundred miles from the sea 
when they reached the Indian village of Bayagou- 
las, where they were most hospitably entertained. 
Here all doubts were removed abou^ their being 
on the right river by finding a prayer book with 
the name of a companion of La Salle in it, and, 
that immortal monument of human affection, the 



THE LOUISIANA DOMINION 21 

historic bark letter of Clievalier De Tonty. For 
this latter precious relic the Frenchmen were 
obliged to present to an Indian chief an ax. Iber- 
ville returned to the sea by way of the two lakes, 
which he named Maurepas and Ponchartrain, after 
two well-known Ministers of France. 

The first settlement of the colony was fixed on 
the east side of the Bay of Biloxi and was called 
Biloxi (now Ocean Springs), from the neighbor- 
ing Indian tribe. Twelve pieces of cannon were 
mounted on the four bastions of the fort that was 
built. Sauvol, a "discreet young man of merit," 
was placed in command and Iberville sailed for 
France. While Bienville, the younger brother of 
the latter, was exploring the surrounding regions 
and passing down the western channel of the Mis- 
sissippi, he met, about eighteen miles below the 
site of New Orleans, a British frigate of twelve 
guns. The young ''lieutenant of the king" 
promptly and firmly informed the English cap- 
tain, Barr, that the King of France had taken 
formal possession of the waters and lands adja- 
cent and that to avoid trouble he had better turn 
the prow of his ship down stream. The cautious 
Englishman heeded the advice of the nervy young 
Frenchman and ever since this particular bend in 
the river has been known by the name of the Eng- 
lish Turn. In December, Iberville returned with 
two large ships, bringing the news that Sauvol 
had been made governor of Louisiana, Bien- 
ville lieutenant-governor, and Boisbriant, major of 
the fort. Leseuer, the geologist, and the brave St. 



22 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Denis came over at this time. Guided by the In- 
dians, who were still friendly, Iberville selected 
some high ground fifty-four miles from the sea 
for a fort and town, which he named Rosalie, from 
the baptismal name of the Countess of Ponchar- 
train. The grim walls of this fort are still exist- 
ing, close by Natchez, the future capital. While 
Bienville, St. Denis and Leseuer were making 
extensive exj^lorations, the geologist accomplished 
much by ascending the ' ' St. Louis ' ' to the falls of 
St. Anthony ; thence up St. Peters River one hun- 
dred and thirty miles and following up a stream 
which he named Green River from the color of its 
waters, built a small fort which he called Fort 
Thuillier, in honor of a patron. Here Leseuer 
passed the winter and in the spring, from mines 
in what is now Minnesota, collected quantities of 
ore and ochre which he carried to Biloxi in April, 
1701, and thence to France. He left the most of 
his men at the fort to claim possession of the 
country. Upon the early death of Sauvol, Bien- 
ville removed his headquarters to Biloxi, and from 
there to the west side of Mobile River. Dauphin 
Island became a fleet station of some importance. 

Spain now being at war with England, Bien- 
ville sent men and munitions of war to the Span- 
iards at Pensacola and St. Augustine. 

The garrison that Leseuer had left at Fort 
Thuillier, among the Sioux Indians, were obliged 
to abandon their outpost in March, 1704, and 
return to Mobile. 

The English of the Atlantic coast retaliated for 



THE LOUISIANA DOMINION 23 

the succor sent to the Spaniards, by stirring up 
and inciting the Alibamons and other Indians to 
attack the French. Thus began the wars and trou- 
bles with the Indians, which ended only with the 
Natchez war of extermination. During the year 
1704 a fifty-gun ship arrived from France with 
much-needed provisions, mihtary supplies and 
seventy-five soldiers. Five priests from the diocese 
of Quebec, two gray nuns for the hospital and 
twenty-three young women of good character, 
formed the most interesting part of this beneficent 
consignment. The homesick colonists lost no time 
in making wives of the marriageable part of the 
passenger list. These poor but modest and pretty 
girls made good wives, except that they rebelled 
against the coarse Indian cornmeal fare of the 
colony. The first white child born in Louisiana 
was called Jean Francois Le Camp. Military 
duties and sickness detained the courageous 
founder of the colony iii France for two years. 
Iberville unfortunately died of yellow fever in the 
line of duty as a soldier, July 9, 1706. He labored 
loyally to advance the interests of his colony and 
country. The first period, which ends with 1712, 
was one of much sickness, many explorations, little 
local growth. 

THE ADVENT OF ANTONY CKOZAT. 

The colony of Louisiana having thus far proven 
not a source of profit or revenue, but a continuing 
drain and expense, the French government sent 



7" 



24 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Diron d 'Artaguette to report on condition and 
remedies. As a result, Antony Crozat, secretary 
of the king's household, was given for the period 
of fifteen years a complete monopoly of the trade 
and commerce of Louisiana, whose limits were to 
be fixed in large measure by the business interests 
and discretion of the grantee. 

When Crozat took charge in 1713, there was a 
population of three hundred and eighty persons, 
counting twent>^ negroes, and one hundred sol- 
diers, tlie latter doubled in efficiency by seventy- 
five seasoned Canadian volunteers. These inhab- 
itants and soldiers were scattered among the five 
forts at Biloxi, Mobile, Dauphin, and Ship Island 
and at Natchez or Fort Rosalie. Crozat brought 
over his own governors, Cadillac and Epenay. He 
had absolute free trade with France, but was un- 
able to land his goods or carry on trade with 
Spanish posts by reason of his own narrow trade 
restrictions. The resolute St. Denis was not able 
to establish neighborly relations with the Span- 
iards near the ]\Iexican border. Governor Cadillac 
went gold hunting and came back empty-handed. 
When ores and minerals were found no one seemed 
to understand the art of profitable mining. Agri- 
culture was neglected. There was not industry 
and energy enough to carr^' on even the trade in 
l^eltries with success. 

The Indians were treated with so little tact and 
such scant justice that enmities were aroused that 
endured for a generation. Lieutenant-Governor 
Bienville, the only leader of j^ioneer experience, 



THE LOUISIANA DOMINION 25 

was hampered, overruled and sent on ruinously 
hazardous forays against treacherous savages. 

At the end of five years of failure, Crozat aban- 
doned his fifteen-year grant or monopoly and re- 
turned to the more congenial atmosphere of Paris. 
He had lost a good-sized fortune in his experiment 
and had caused a net increase of less than three 
hundred inhabitants of all classes, colors and de- 
scriptions. Not a brilliant exhibit, tiiily, for a 
man heralded as a great financier and still indis- 
criminately called a great merchant or great 
banker ! The historic truth is that the successful 
courtier of Versailles was out of his element 
among savages and backwoodsmen. The luxuries 
of a palace could not be profitably exchanged for 
pioneer hardships and privations. Compared with 
successful colonizers like William Penn and the 
second Lord Baltimore or with great fur traders 
like John Jacob Astor, Antony Crozat was a babe 
at the bottle. 

COMPANY OF THE WEST — JOHN LAW. 

Under the newly chartered Company of the 
West, which succeeded to more than all the priv- 
ileges and monopolies of the Crozat charter, Bien- 
ville was restored to power as governor. Boisbri- 
ant was given command over the "Illinois dis- 
trict," which was brought under the government 
of Louisiana, 

The years 1718-19 were years of activity. In 
February, 1718, Bienville, with fifty men, began to 



26 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

clear the ground and found the city which he named 
New Orleans, after the Duke of Orleans, then re- 
gent of France. The transfer of the company's 
stores from Biloxi to New Orleans took place in 
June, 1722. Du Pratz and La Harpe were recent 
valuable accessions to the colony. The new com- 
pany laid claim to all of Texas, based on the ex- 
plorations or settlements of La Salle, Bienville 
and St. Denis. But after La Harpe 's unsuccessful 
attempt on St. Bernard, Texas was abandoned by 
the French. In June, 1719, the first direful car- 
goes of five hundred slaves were brought in on 
two vessels arriving from the coast of Guinea. 
About this time large grants of land were given 
to influential families of France. The notorious 
financial speculator and stock gambler, John Law, 
President of the new company, was granted twelve 
square miles of land on the Arkansas River. For 
settlers he sent over hundreds of honest Germans 
and fifteen hundred other immigrants not so 
honest. Law's scheme was the now abandoned 
paper money inflation scheme, coupled with tlie 
issuing and prolonged issuing or watering of stock 
or paper promises, without limit and without end. 
Law escaped to Italy when the crash came, after 
his carriage had been broken into pieces in Paris 
by his deluded victims. The curse of a worthless 
medium of exchange was followed by a more 
dreadful drawback to prosperity, the Natchez 
Indian wars, which reached a horrible culmination 
in the general massacres of 1729. The merciless 
slaughter of five hundred men' women and chil- 



THE LOUISIANA DOMINION 27 

dren, at the Mississippi, Yazoo, Washita and otJier 
settlements, calls only for pitying sympathy and 
commiseration. The fiendish atrocities and un- 
speakable cruelties of the Natchez savages are too 
revolting to dwell upon, too awful to relate. It is 
not strange that Bienville, the veteran Indian 
fighter and "father of the colony," after having 
been twice defeated by the same tribe, should be 
willing to retire at sixty-two from the field of such 
fruitless toil and inglorious conflict. Fort Orleans, 
whose construction was begun by Burgmont in 
1721, was totally destroyed and its occupants mas- 
sacred in 1724. This was situated on an island 
near the mouth of the Missouri River. In 1727 the 
capable Governor Perier began the levee system 
by constructing a levee thirty-six miles in length, 
which included New Orleans. But the general 
metliod was faulty where there was so little self- 
government. Everything was determined in 
France. 

During the Mississippi bubble period, the sick 
were often without medicines and some settlers 
perished from hunger. Provisions were secured 
from France, from Spanish forts, from the In- 
dians; but not in sufficient quantities from the 
soil. A change came in April, 1732, when the 
John Law monopoly ended by the King of France 
proclaiming that the Province of Louisiana was 
free and open to trade and commerce with equal 
privileges to all his subjects. From 1733 to 1762 
was a comparatively uneventful period of gradual 
and peaceful progress. In 1750 the population 



28 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

increased to seven thousand, four thousand being 
white. 

In 1751 the Jesuit missionaries introduced the 
sugar cane from St. Domingo and also some blacks 
who understood the art of sugar making. M. 
Dubreuil built the first sugar mill on what is now 
Esplanade avenue. About 1756 began the arrival 
of the Acadians, whom Longfellow has since im- 
mortalized, who were driven out of Nova Scotia 
by arbitrary force. They settled in Baltimore and 
in the western part of the present State of Louisi- 
ana and their descendants have made good citizens. 

SPANISH POSSESSION — O^KEILLY. 

By the Treaty of Fontainebleau of November 3, 

1762, Louis XV transferred to Spain the whole 
territory of Louisiana lying west of the Mississippi 
River, including New Orleans. On February' 10, 

1763, the French King agreed at Paris to grant 
to England all this territory Ijdng east of the Mis- 
sissippi, except New Orleans. A dull voluptuary, 
such as Louis XV, had hardly manly sentiment 
enough to feel any deep regret over the loss of col- 
onists that had not proven profitable and who re- 
quired defense. He had in two years surrendered 
every foot of French territoiy on the American 
continent. The French lacked the Anglo-Saxon 
instinct for successful colonization. But now when 
there were signs of a larger prosperity, these col- 
onists were suddenlj^ cast off by the parent coun- 
try. Not until 1766 was the first Spanish gover- 
nor, Ulloa, sent out to assume control. Bringing 



THE LOUISIANA DOMINION 29 

out but ninety soldiers with him, he found it pru- 
dent, in view of the state of feeling, to proceed 
slowly and depart discreetly for Havana. 

After an unusual delay, Lieutenant-General 
O'Reilly took firm and formal possession of the 
IDrovince in 1769 as governor and captain general. 
He landed on the levee four thousand soldiers— 
about three times the force that tlie colony could 
command. That a haughty power like Spain 
would not permit its authority to be defied, should 
have been anticipated. But O'Reilly's treacher- 
ously base and despotically cruel course of action 
ended in a piece of infamous brutality; in cow- 
ardly acts of needless butchery. 

The chief men who had been active in manifest- 
ing their loyalty to France were lulled into a feel- 
ing of security by an outward exhibition of a 
courteous and conciliator^^ temper and by proffers 
of hospitality. No sooner had Villeare, a worthy 
planter, passed in at the guarded gate, than he 
was arrested, forced on board a Spanish man-of- 
war and there brutally killed by a guard for the 
crime of insisting upon speaking to his grief- 
stricken wife. La Freniere, the eloquent lawyer; 
Marquis and De Noyant, ranking officers of the 
colony troops; Joseph Milhet and Caresse, lead- 
ing merchants, were railroaded through the trav- 
esty of a trial; then led out and shot in the most 
public square. Not alone the kindred of the doomed 
men but the inhabitants generally fled from the 
scene and city, paralyzed with horror! 

Some of the six victims had seen their sires 



30 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

butchered in the ghastly massacres of the Natchez 
savages ; their children were now asked in turn to 
behold their fathers put to death by a Spanish 
savage whose hands were to be stained by an un- 
forgivable and inhuman atrocit}'. Such crimes are 
beyond the reach of the chastisements of human 
though not of divine justice. 

Six otlier prominent men were found guilty of a 
disinclination to become Spanish subjects, on the 
deposition of a single witness; were transported 
to Cuba and imprisoned for various tenns in the 
dungeons of Morro Castle. An immediate change 
in the laws of their colony was another exaction 
which the terrified inhabitants had to bear. The 
Spanish language was made the official language 
and was used in courts, schools and churches. 
Trade restrictions of the narrowest nature were 
imposed. Unzaga and the Marquis de la Torre 
succeeded the tyrannical O'Eeilly as governors. 
Louisiana was detached from the bishopric of Que- 
bec and annexed to that of Havana. The mild ad- 
ministration of Governor General Unzaga contrib- 
uted much to heal the wounds of the past. He 
showed a disposition to relax the laws and regu- 
lations to favor a large contraband trade with the 
struggling American colonies which caused New 
Orleans to advance its commercial importance ma- 
terially from 1772 to the close of the revolution. 
The renowned Governor General de Galvez, who 
assumed office Januarj'- 1, 1777, continued and 
broadened the friendly policy of his predecessors 
toward the American colonies. 



THE LOUISIANA DOMINION 31 

ST. LOUIS FOUNDED. 

Turning now to other parts of the Purchase ter- 
ritory, we find that Village du Cote, now St. 
Charles, on the Missouri River, was the first 
village built west of the Mississippi and north of 
the Arkansas. The date of this settlement was 
1762. On the 15th of February, 1764, St. Louis was 
founded by Father Laclede and named after the 
canonized Louis IX of France; not after Louis 
XV, who was a somewhat soiled saint. The Louis- 
iana Fur Company, which the enterprising friar 
represented, had the exclusive right to trade with 
the Missouri River Indians. Antoine Maxent was 
the active trading agent of the company. Auguste 
Chouteau took charge of the building operations, 
which he carried foi'ward with energy. The ar- 
rival of the French commander, St. Ange de Belle- 
rive, with fifty men, in July, 1765, made St. Louis 
the future capital of upper Louisiana. It was 
while on a. visit to this hospitable French officer, 
that the great chief and warrior, Pontiac, was 
killed on the opposite side of the river by a Kas- 
kaskia Indian enemy. 

In the winter of 1770-71, Don Pedro Piernas was 
sent by tlie new Spanish governor at New Orleans 
to take civil and military command. St. Louis 
prospered under his wise and conservative policy. 
After narrowly escaping destruction from a dan- 
gerous British and Indian plot in 1780, the peace 
of 1783 found the town flourishing under the in- 
telligent administration of Governor Cruzat. Re- 



32 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

ferring to a date four years prior, tlie historian 
Bancroft says: 

' ' The Spanish town of St. Louis was fast rising 
into importance as the center of the fur trade with 
the Indian nations on the Missouri.'* 

THE VICTORIOUS GALVEZ. 

Eeturning to lower Louisiana, it is refreshing 
to find a brave and brilliant soldier still conducting 
its affairs. No sooner had the news of a declara- 
tion of war by Spain against Great Britain been 
received at New Orleans, than Governor Galvez 
invested and captured Fort Bute, Baton Rouge 
and Fort Panmure. Sharing in these daring ex- 
plpits were one hundred Americans and Canadians 
who took the required oath of allegiance and per- 
manently settled in Louisiana. The victories of 
Galvez and his later capture of Pensacola seem to 
have had an influence on the action of the Amer- 
ican Congress. That body was guilty" of vacilla- 
tion and made the bad break of instnicting its Min- 
ister to Spain in 1781, John Jay, to abandon the 
free navigation of the Mississippi below thiiiy-one 
degrees of north latitude, provided Spain would 
fonn an alliance with the United States and rec- 
ognize their independence. Jay submitted a draft 
of a treaty providing that the foregoing proposal 
or clause should be void if the alliance was post- 
poned to a general peace. The foresight of Min- 
ister Jay, coupled with the habitual dilatoriness of 
Spanish oflficials, prol^ably kept us from being sub- 
merged in a sea of troubles. 



TEE LOUISIANA DOMINION 33 

CLAKK, BOONE, SEVIEE, KOBERTSON. 

The strong men who pushed American civiliza- 
tion toward and to the Mississippi must not be for- 
gotten. The wielders of the ax and the rifle; the 
builders of log cabins and of settlements; the 
founders of towns and of states; these are the 
pioneers who fell the forests and hew the west- 
ward way. The greatest of these backwoods war- 
riors and middle West winners was George Sog- 
ers Clark. He brought about the organization of 
Kentucky as a county of Virginia; in 1777, he 
entered upon the conquest of Illinois, establishing 
a military post opposite Louisville, capturing Kas- 
kaskia,, Vincennes, and relieving Cahokia in 1780 
from a desperate attack of British and Indians, 
and rendering other splendid services of far-reach- 
ing importance. 

From the commencement of Daniel Boone's ef- 
fectual pioneer work in Kentucky in 1772, he ad- 
vanced his lines, held his outposts and moved to- 
ward the Mississippi as his destination. Sevier 
and Robertson extended North Carolina to the 
Great River boundary by adding Tennessee and 
taught thousands to be resolute and brave by their 
example. These and a hundred fameless, though 
noble heroes, in standing bravely by their posts of 
dut}^ and their outposts of danger in the then far 
West, made the amazing addition to our public do- 
minion possible, through the great peace treaty 
with England of 1783. 



CHAPTEE III. 

REACHING TO THE MISSISSIPPI. 

GEEAT TREATIES OF 1782-3 — WHO MADE THEM. 

THE definitive treaty of peace with Great 
Britain, signed at Paris, September 3, 
1783, brought a happy and glorious end- 
ing to the seven years ' war for American 
independence. The second article of that mem- 
orable treaty made the middle of the northern lakes 
and the central channel of the Mississippi Kiver 
our new general lines of boundary, north and west. 
Article eight reads : ' ' The navigation of the River 
Mississippi, from its source to the ocean, shall for- 
ever remain free and open to the subjects of Great 
Britain and the citizens of the United States." 

In confiniiing by a solemn convention the some- 
what shadowy colonial claims to the vast Indian 
territory lying between the Alleghcnies and the 
Mississippi, the area of the thirteen original col- 
onies was at once doubled. What are now the 
prosperous States of Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, Mich- 
igan, Wisconsin, Minnesota in part, Kentuclvy, 
Tennessee, iSIississippi and Alabama, are the fruit- 
ful political offspring of this most beneficent 
treaty. In its large immediate results— peace and 
the creation of a nation— and in its never-ending 
future influence, this is one of the two greatest 

34 



TO THE MISSISSIPPI 35 

American treaties. Without it the centennial of 
the treaty of twenty j^ears later, that of the Louis- 
iana Purchase of 1803, would not so soon, if at all, 
be celebrated. 

What were the causes and events, what and by 
whom the exertions and utterances that led up to 
this blessed compact of peace and freedom? Wlio 
were the benefactors of America that brought 
about the partition of the British empire and the 
building of an American empire tliat has become 
greater? 

Primarily we owe the peace of freedom to the 
toils and militar}^ successes of Washington, 
Greene, Wayne, Knox, Schuyler and deserving 
others. Before the battle of Yorktown, peace with 
independence was never possible. To gather the 
fmits and garner the harvests from that benign 
victory, the Franklins were needed in the field of 
foreign diplomacy. Long before the sun of tran- 
quillity" had dawned, Benjamin Franklin's benig- 
nant face and penetrating, spectacled eyes, illumi- 
nated the scene. Arriving in Paris in December, 
1776, Franklin with his colleagues, Silas Deane 
and Arthur Lee, was able to secure secret aid from 
France and from individual sympathizers in our 
struggle for libert>\ As early as February 6, 
1778, he negotiated with our first and most gener- 
ous foreign friend, Vergennes, two very important 
treaties ; one of amity and commerce, the other of 
alliance. 

Article two of the latter reads : ' ' The essential 
and direct end of the present defensive alliance is 



36 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

to maintain effectually the liberty, sovereignty and 
independence absolute and unlimited, of the United 
States, as well in matters of government as of com- 
merce. ' ' 

This direct and comprehensive affirmation is re- 
peated in article seven and strengthened by the 
further guaranty that ''their possessions, and the 
additions or conquests that their confederation may 
obtain during the war, from any of the dominions 
now or heretofore possessed by Great Britain in 
North America." * * * ''Shall be fixed and 
secured to the said States, at the moment of the 
cessation of their present war with England." 

What amazing foresight! As if both negoti- 
ators had the peace tresity of five years later in 
mind. 

FEANKLIN, JAY AND ADAMS. 

The dark valley of tribulation, death and Valley 
Forge being passed, Livingston and other wise 
men of the West asked Dr. Franklin to heal the 
wounds of war and bring about a reconciliation be- 
tween the victors and the vanquished. Franklin 
saw that the supreme hour and opportunity of his 
life had come. Crowned with the wisdom of sev- 
enty-seven years, he gathered in and utilized all 
the agencies and resources of his intellect, influ- 
ence, i^opularit^'- and power. He renewed his cor- 
respondence with every public cliaracter, philos- 
opher and man of science he ever knew, in France 
or England. The embracing and kissing of Vol- 
taire before the French Academy of Science ; the 



TO THE MISSISSIPPI 37 

assiduous cultivation of Count de Vergennes and 
his royal master and mistress; liis good-natured 
submission to the annoyance of being followed by 
crowds upon the streets, and even his harmless 
gallantries with Madame Helvetius and other an- 
cient and antique dames, were attentions and com- 
placencies bestowed that he might promote his 
country's welfare more. 

When everj^thing a la Franklin in Paris be- 
came at once a la mode, this wise philosopher was 
ripe to achieve triumphs in peace more enduring 
and no less renowned than those of war. He wrote 
to John Jay, who was vainly trying to borrow 
money and to make a treaty with Spain, that 
his aid in Paris would be of infinite value. Jay 
tried to borrow five million dollars and succeeded 
in borrowing one hundred and forty thousand dol- 
lars. Jay reached Paris, June 23, which was nine- 
ty-three days before the preliminary treaty of 
peace was concluded. Franklin begged John 
Adams, whose two treaties had gained him much 
glory in Holland and at home, to reinforce Jay 
and himself in France, but Adams tarried near 
the scene of his triumphs and did not reach Paris 
until October 26, 1782, just thirty-four days before 
the first of the two identical treaties was signed. 

FEANKLIN^S GREAT WORK. 

For several months the strenuous Franklin car- 
ried on his peace-making unaided. While in- 
structed by his Government to make a treaty with 



38 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Great Britain, he could find no agents of England 
with whom to confer. Lord Stormont, the British 
ambassador in Paris, had insulted him a few years 
before by replying to a respectful letter that, ' ' The 
king's ministers receive no applications from reb- 
els, unless they have come to implore his majesty's 
clemency." As early as June, 1781, David Hart- 
ley, afterwards British signer of the definitive 
treaty, had asked his friend Franklin to procure for 
him a passport from the Count Vergennes to enable 
him to visit Paris. In April, 1782, our adroit 
diplomatist succeeded in getting his old friend 
Richard Oswald appointed by Lord Shelburne, 
home and colonial secretary, to begin negotiations 
for peace. Franklin presented Oswald to Ver- 
gennes and shrewdl}" remained during the entire 
conference. The same presentation took place 
when Foreign Secretary Fox sent over Thomas 
Grenville to negotiate a treaty- between France and 
England, Franklin being present at the first and 
at repeated conferences. Finding Grenville less 
pliable than Oswald, the American, more cunning 
than the British Fox, succeeded in getting Oswald 
appointed the chief negotiator of the British gov- 
ernment. 

With the English agents and their assistants 
largely of his own selection and with Vergennes 
in as confidential relations with him as the chief 
minister of another government could honorably 
be, our first and greatest di]ilomatist was prepared 
to proceed to serious conclusions. Again writing 
Jay to render himself in Paris as soon as possible, 



TO THE MISSISSIPPI 39 

he presented his colleague the day after his arrival, 
to Vergennes, who received hini very cordially. 
This pure patriot and methodical and upright man, 
curbed somewhat the impetuous Franklin, who, 
like other great men, had a dislike for delays and 
a distaste for details. Jay was cautious, high- 
toned, firm and precise. 

Keeping in view the time employed and labor 
bestowed, Franklin and Jay were the two chief 
American negotiators. Mr. Adams did not visit 
his colleague Franklin, who was ill, until three 
days after his arrival. He did not pay his respects 
to the French minister of foreign affairs, who in 
a large sense held the destinies of America in his 
hands, until November 10, just fifteen days after 
he reached Paris. The magnanimous Vergennes, 
instead of resenting the slight, invited Adams to 
dine on the day that he called, gave him the seat 
of honor at the table and in other ways treated 
him with uncommon respect. 

Our tardy commissioner continued to accept the 
hospitalities of the generous minister, which he re- 
warded by giving currency to the suspicion that 
Vergennes had betrayed a cause to which he had 
given and was giving ultimate success in both war 
and peace. 

As an honorable peace is usuall}^ brought about 
by nations at war through honorable men, it seems 
fitting to discuss the high representatives of 
France, England and America who directed and 
wisely ended this great negotiation. Of these 
epoch-making men our own rare Ben Franklin 



4(3 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

should undoubtedly be ranked first. He bad been 
for half a lifetime the agent abroad of one, three, 
or all, the American colonies. Franklin knew both 
Europe and America. He had courageously faced 
the enemies of his country, headed by Wedderburn 
and others, before the bar of the House of Com- 
mons ; and he had grappled its friends to his heart 
with anns of tenderness and strength. 

France received him as the conqueror of the 
lightning and of tyrants. Europe revered him as 
the greatest living scientist, philosopher and sage. 
He had reached the full maturity of wordly wis- 
dom. He had the tact of a Metternich and the 
adroitness of a Talleyrand. Is it strange then that 
as a cat plays with a captured mouse, he should 
toss about and dominate at will, Oswald, Hartley, 
Grenville, Fitzherbert, Strachey and all the under- 
strappers of the British foreign office? In short, 
Franklin got into the two treaties the Mississippi, 
the fisheries and all he was instructed to get in and 
with Oswald's consent, would have added Canada, 
if Jay and Adams had supported him in a claim so 
savoring of audacity. 

COUNT DE VERGENNES. 

As the personal equation can never be eliminated 
from aifairs of government, the wise, patient, well- 
poised Vergennes is the next most potent person- 
ality to consider. In 1782-3, Vergennes was France 
and France was Vergennes. As strong men ad- 
mire strength in others, this statesman's love of 



TO THE MISSISSIPPI 41 

Franklin and his cause and desire to cripple Eng- 
land at the opportune time, led him to form the 
two generous treaties of amity and alliance in 
1778; to advance to the struggling colonies 40,- 
000,000 francs ; to send over to our aid De Grasse, 
Rochambeau and about 15,000 sailors and soldiers ; 
to recognize our sovereignty and independence 
earliest, and when triumph came after the com- 
bined French and American assaults on Yorktown, 
to take the first firm steps towards a permanent 
peace. Vergennes agreed to make and did make 
a peace treaty of even date witli Great Britain, 
keeping pace with our own negotiations, even after 
he was coolly informed that a secret treaty was 
about to be sent to America, the terms of which 
were to be withheld from him. On this disregard 
of instructions from the American Government 
and impeachment of his own good faith, Ver- 
gennes' wounded feelings find dignified utterance 
in a note to Franklin. In his reply, although ex- 
cusing a breach of diplomatic procedure which he 
himself opposed, our cunning moralist rises to an 
elevation of diction and graceful speech of unsur- 
passable felicities. Yet this slight did not deter 
the forgiving French minister from supporting the 
Mississippi boundary, the fisheries and all other 
controverted claims of both the preliminary and 
final treaty. 

In the clearer historic light of to-day, the sus- 
picions of Adams and Jay must give way to facts. 
An unbroken series of unmistakable acts, events 
and results are worth a thousand ''suspicions." 



42 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

The end crowns all. The truth is, that until the day 
of his death, in 1787, Vergennes was as true to this 
Country as his duty to his own king and country' 
permitted him to be. If Vergennes sold us out, we, 
not England or Spain, got the profits of the sale. 
If with his alleged duplicitj^ we got all we asked 
for, what more could we have gotten if he had been 
blunt and sincere? 

In the accusations against Rear Admiral Schley 
we seem to have the Vergennes case over again. 
Measured by triumphant results, the French diplo- 
matist and the American hero each did the best 
possible. But against each it is charged that if 
he had not done this, that or the other thing, re- 
sults would have been better than the best possible. 
Vergennes was a minister of peace who may sleep 
calmly amid the enduring fragrance and repose of 
his many peace-restoring treaties.* 

LOED SHELBURNE. 

This British statesman was the friend of Amer- 
ica when America needed friends most. For this, 
tlie implacable George III once said that he dis- 
liked him as much as he did Alderman Wilkes. In 
Februaiy, 1782, Shelburae voted with the oppo- 

* Since giving expression to this favorable view of Ver- 
gennes, I find my high estimate is more than sustained by 
Henri Doniol in his Histoire De La Participation De La 
France A L'Etahlissement Des Etats-Unis D'Amvrique. This 
monumental work, published by authority of the French Gov- 
ernment, should be translated and republished by our Govern- 
ment, as it relates to what is most vital in our national his- 
tory. A noble portrait of Cojite de Vergennes adorns volume 
one. 



TO THE MISSISSIPPI 43 

sition to Lord North when they carried a reso- 
lution through the House of Commons, declaring 
that those who advise prolonging the war with 
America were enemies of their country. In March, 
when the King was compelled to call upon Lord 
Shelburne to form a cabinet, the latter unselfishly 
advised that Lord Rockingham be made premier 
and himself took the modest post of home and 
colonial secretary. 

The leader of the Rockingham Whigs having 
died on July 1, 1782, just three months after he 
assumed control of the new ministry, Lord Shel- 
burne became Prime Minister and soon honorably 
and amicably concluded the Preliminary Treaty 
of peace with America. This he deliberately did 
at a sacrifice, as he feared, and as it proved, of his 
high ofiice. The Earl of Shelburne has been 
blindly accused of duplicity, but results speak for 
themselves and amply vindicate him. From first 
to last he favored such liberal terms for our treaty 
commissioners that the British Parliament would 
not sanction his liberality and he was exiled from 
power. Although supported by Edmund Burke, 
this friend of the great Lord Chatham and patron 
of William Pitt, was driven from office by the 
enemies of our country, aided by its pretended 
friends. 

Charles James Fox, the prolix orator and re- 
versible politician, formed an ill-timed and ill- 
famed combination with Lord North, that odious 
tool of early Revolutionary tyranny. This 
wretched office-getting union of old and long-time 



44 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

political adversaries was compelled, within a year, 
by the sober sense of the English people, to ratify 
the very terms of a treaty, which the combine had 
voted the Shelburne cabinet out of power for ap- 
]n'oving. The historian Lecky says of this friend 
of our country: "He bore a long exclusion from 
office with great dignitj' and calm, and no part 
of his public career appears to have been influenced 
by any sordid desire of emolument, title or place. ' ' 
The cause which made Lord Shelburne unpopular 
in England should have tlie opposite effect here. 
True Americans, stand by your Nation's friends! 

EGBERT R. LIVINGSTON. 

Franklin, Vergennes, Shelburne and Livingston 
were the four government agents, clothed with 
power, that brought about the first and final treaties 
of 1782-1783. Livingston was the equal of John 
Adams as an able and convincing logician without 
the angular and obstinate bluntness of Adams. He 
was the superior of Jay as a man of affairs and in 
a rugged strength of understanding. Robert R. 
Livingston, the first in achievement of the six dis- 
tinguished members of this remarkable family, was 
elected to the Continental Congress in April, 1775. 
Serving on many important committees, he sensed 
from June 11, 1776, to July 4, on the committee 
of five whose deliberations and conclusions gave 
the reasons, rhetorically set forth by Mr. Jefferson, 
for the Declaration of Independence. On x\ugust 
10, 1781, he was elected by Congress Secretary of 



TO THE MISSISSIPPI 45 

Foreign Affairs and in the discharge of the most 
delicate diplomatic duties, exhibited talents and 
aptitude of the highest order. 

In Secretary Livingston 's instructions to Frank- 
lin, dated January 7, 1782, are embodied in the 
most argumentative and exact form the American 
claim for the Mississippi as our boundary line, and 
for other much-desired concessions, that can any- 
where be found. He says, I believe, ' ' that our ex- 
tension to the Mississippi is founded in justice, 
and that our claims are at least such as the events 
of the war gave us the right to insist upon. ' ' He 
followed with the keenest watchfulness each step 
in the negotiations for a peace with honor and 
when untold benefits to his country were unques- 
tionably assured, this patriot resigned his high 
post to become first chancellor of the State of New 
York. 

FEEE NAVIGATION, 

The high ground taken, fortified and rendered 
impregnable by Livingston and his three able 
Commissioners in Paris, had been occupied before 
by far-seeing men. The old Treaty of 1763 had 
guarantied to the subjects of France and Great 
Britain the right to free navigation of the Missis- 
sippi, "in its whole breadth and length from its 
source to tlie sea. ' ' The first American statesman 
whose clear vision seems to have discerned the 
value to this country of this region was Alex- 
ander Hamilton. In his works, published by the 
Putnams and edited by Senator Lodge, we find on 
page 28, Vol. 1, these sentiments: "The farmer, 



46 TEE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

I am inclined to hope, builds too much on the 
present disunion of Canada, Georgia, the Floridas, 
the Mississippi and Nova Scotia, from other col- 
onies. A little time, I tnist, will awaken them to 
a proper sense of their indiscretion. I please my- 
self with the flattering prospect that they will ere 
long unite in one indissoluble chain with the rest 
of the colonies." This is from **A Full Vindica- 
tion" of the measures of Congress, in answer to 
the calumnies of a AYestchester Fanner, published 
in December, 1774. On page 18 of same volume is 
a pertinent paragraph by this youth of seventeen, 
too wisely iDrophetic at so early a date, to be passed 
by: "If, by the necessity" of the thing, manufac- 
tures should once establish and take root among 
us, they will pave the way still more to the future 
grandeur and glory of America." The practical 
business sagacity of the great Washington led him 
to increase his quota of money in what he calls the 
"Mississippi Adventure." He attends the meet- 
ings of a company in 1763, 1765, 1767, and in 
March, 1773, he sends his tenant, James Wood, as 
an agent to locate lands "as high up the Mississippi 
as the navigation is good, having been infonned 
that the lands are better and the climate more tem- 
perate in the northern parts of the government 
than below." Wood was not successful. 

Until 1781 all business relating to foreign and 
financial aifairs was transacted through commit- 
tees of Congress. On September 26, 1776, a com- 
mittee consisting of Gouverneur Morris, R. H. Lee, 
G. Wvthe and John Adams were instructed to draw 



TO THE MISSISSIPPI 47 

up and report to Congress a set of instructions for 
tlie commissioners about to be sent abroad. This 
committee prepared instructions of vast import- 
ance, drawn no doubt by the brilliant Morris, whose 
later instructions to our minister in Spain and to 
Franklin in Paris were accepted by Congress with 
slight change and "became the basis of the treaty 
(1782) by which we finally won peace." In sup- 
port of the high authority of President Roosevelt, 
whose w^ords we have just quoted, we may add that 
the secret journals of Congress prove that "the 
middle of the River Mississippi" boundary line 
was first publicly claimed by this statesman. 

After much backing and filling on this question 
by Congress, clear cut and well defined instruc- 
tions were at lengtli agreed upon, October 4, 1780, 
and sent, October 17, to John Jay, then at Madrid. 
These came from a new committee, of which James 
Madison was chairman. They were presumably 
from the clear brain and persuasive pen of Mr. 
Madison, and are in his earlier and best style. 
Not only the western line, but the free navigation 
of the Mississippi are insisted upon, and the rea- 
sons for the claims are amplified and argued with 
resistless logic and force. Congress receded slight- 
ly in May, 1781, from the high stand taken in 
this strong state paper, but Secretary Livingston 
ever after referred to it as the basis of subsequent 
instructions relating to a penoaanent peace. For 
their enlightened acts and utterances after 1783 
other American statesmen will receive merited rec- 
ognition. 



CHAPTER lY. 

THE CRITICAL PERIOD OF SPANISH 
RULE IN LOUISIANA. 

FROM 1784 TO 1789 — DISTURBED RELATIONS WITH 
THE WEST. 

THE definitive treaty of peace with Great 
Britain, concluded September 3, 1783, was 
so favorable to the United States that it 
was unanimously ratified by the Congress 
of the Confederation January 14, 1784, and im- 
mediately proclaimed. The foreign relations of 
the confederation government, during the eight 
years of its feeble existence, being conducted by 
the many states acting as one state, were success- 
fully managed. After the peace, Franklin com- 
ments much on the continuing cordiality of the 
court of France. Both Vergennes and Luzerne, 
his most tinisted minister, in numerous letters, pub- 
lished and unpublished, express their great grati- 
fication that the L^nited States was able to secure 
from England such satisfactory terms. George 
III, with unconcealed reluctance, fixed his signa- 
ture to England's ratification on xVpril 9, 1784. 

During the period from peace to good govern- 
ment under the hero of the Revolution, who is also 
the hero of the ages, some of the most significant 
events in our territorial history occurred in Ken- 

48 



SPANISH RULE IN LOUISIANA 49 

tuclvy, Tennessee and in lower Louisiana. Spain 
refused to accept tlie British and American con- 
struction of the Treaties of 1782 and 1783, which 
were identical. Having acquired West Florida 
before the cession, by conquest, she continued to 
hold the disputed Natchez district until 1795. Con- 
trolling both sides of the lower Mississippi, the 
free navigation of that river was denied the west- 
ern Americans living on its banks and its tribu- 
taries. The latter thought it was their God-given 
highway to the sea and to civilization. John Jay, 
our Secretary of Foreign Affairs after Livingston, 
finding that Spain would not yield this point with- 
out war, was willing in 1786 to waive the free nav- 
igation for twenty-five years ; but Congress, wiser 
than Jay, declined to yield. However, while re- 
fusing to abandon their treaty rights. Congress 
was in no position to enforce them. The first line 
of policy pursued by Governor Estevan Miro, who 
succeeded the gallant Galvez in 1785, was to array 
all the Indian tribes within reach against the west- 
erners, and then tlirough these savage allies to 
promote the aggrandizement of Spain. 

Following that successful soldier and able ad- 
ministrator, Galvez, to his new elevation as viceroy 
of Mexico, we find that, with the aid of his beauti- 
ful and benevolent Louisiana wife, he ruled mildly 
but absolutely over the Mexicans for ten years, 
gaining thereby extraordinary j^opularity and last- 
ing renown. Galvez built a costly palace on the 
Rock of Chapultepec, which grew to be a castle or 
fortress of formidable strength. It was captured 



50 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

by General Winfield Scott just before that hero 
entered the City of Mexico in 1847. The memory 
of this meritorious Spaniard has been perpetuated 
by the Texas city that has risen so recently from 
its watery grave. His death at thirty-eight was 
greatly deplored. 

Eecurring to events on the Mississippi, it ap- 
pears extremely probable that the first suggestion 
of a union of Indian tribes and Spaniards to bring 
about a separation of the Western territories from 
the rest of the states, came from the Creek Indian 
chief with the Scotch name of ]\IcGillivray. This 
ambitious savage of fascinating personality was 
the son of a Scotchman of high mentality and a 
high-bred Indian princess. Uniting some of the 
worst and best qualities of his ancestors, this war- 
rior, while not a statesman of the forest like Pon- 
tiac, or a gentleman in war paint like Tecumseh, 
had a high capacity to kill and a prophetic fore- 
knowledge of things to come. He saw, before 
Aranda, Navarro and Miro did, that Spaniards or 
Americans must dominate this continent. He was 
a number one expert in treachery" and a human 
bloodhound in pursuit. James Eobertson, his 
brave Tennessee antagonist, described McGillivray 
and the situation when he said: ''The Spaniards 
are inspired by the devil ; the Creeks by the devil 
and the Spaniards ; and the worst devil in human 
foiTH is the Creek chief, McGillivray." This en- 
terprising savage gathered the Creek, Choctaw, 
Chickasaw and many other Indian chiefs into an 
assemblage at Pensacola, which he called a con- 



SPANISH RULE IN LOUISIANA 51 

gress. This meeting was dignified by the attend- 
ance of Governor Miro. The highest Spanish of- 
ficials and their families attended with the chiefs, 
social or public entertainments, where the painted 
savages excelled even the whites in their flatteries 
by insisting that all the beautiful ladies present 
were sisters and had descended from heaven. Mc- 
Gillivray 's zeal was made active by a bribe or pen- 
sion of fiftj^ dollars per month, and other chiefs 
came in for the usual presents. After spending 
three hundred thousand dollars to win over the 
aborigines, we are prejjared to believe that all at 
least who had received rich presents were ready to 
declare on all occasions, whether drunk or sober, 
that they had "Spanish hearts" in their breasts 
and scalping knives in their belts for the Amer- 
icans ! 

The civil and military governor of Louisiana, 
while adroitly placating and uniting the Indians, 
did not neglect religious and other less important 
concerns. In his proclamation of 1786 he exhorts 
the faithful Catholics to attend the celebration of 
the holy mysteries ; to abstain from work on sacred 
days; to close shop doors and prevent the slaves 
from dancing on the public squares before the end 
of evening service ; he forbids females of color to 
wear on their heads any plumes or jewelry, but to 
have their hair bound in a kerchief ; inhabitants of 
the city are forbidden to leave it either by land or 
water without a passport ; the verbal sales of slaves 
are forbidden. During this year the revenues from 
exports and imports at New Orleans amounted to 



52 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

seventy-two thousand dollars. In February, 1787, 
Navarro, the intendent of the province, wrote to 
Spain: ''The powerful enemies we have to fear 
in this province are not the English, but the Amer- 
icans, whom we must oppose by active and suffi- 
cient measures." And this official wisely adds by 
way of advice, which was not followed: "The 
only way to check them is with a proportionate 
population, and it is not by imposing commercial 
restrictions that this population is to be acquired, 
but by granting a prudent extension and freedom 
of trade." The trade with the Indians was largely 
increased by means of a loose liberality toward 
them, but the moribund Charles III of Spain was 
disposed to draw the line of virtual prohibition on 
up-river Americans. While the commerce of the 
developing regions of Tennessee and Kentucky was 
expanding yearly the Spanish duties, extortions 
and exactions were doubled. New customs officers 
and military forces had been placed at Natchez 
and New Madrid. 

Trade restrictions and impositions upon river 
traffic were fast becoming unbearable. Confisca- 
tions of vessels and cargoes and the imprisonment 
of officers and crews were not infrequent. The 
victims of these recurring outrages, if so fortu- 
nate as to escape from custody, wandered back to 
their settlements, penniless, hungry- and in rags. 

A feeling of general indignation took posses- 
sion of the pioneers of the Kentucky and Cum- 
berland valleys. A militaiy invasion of lower 
Louisiana and the forcible seizure of Natchez and 



SPANISH RULE IN LOUISIANA 53 

New Orleans were mucli discussed. The emer- 
gency called forth a leader of abilih^ and audacity 
in the person of a daring but disgruntled soldier 
of the Revolution. Colonel James Wilkinson, born 
in Maryland, had been with Arnold at Quebec ; was 
adjutant general on the staff of Horatio Gates, with 
whom he quarreled when Gates was Secretary of 
the Board of War, and later, was "clothier gen- 
eral" of the ill-clad Revolutionary army. Wilkin- 
son in 1787, being then a peaceful Kentucky mer- 
chant, casting about to find some solution for the 
practical nonintercourse problem, proceeded down 
the Mississippi with four boatloads of flour, to- 
bacco and other merchandise. The first obstruc- 
tion he encountered was Gayoso de Lemos, the 
Spanish commander at Natchez, who, after mu- 
tual hospitalities, was so impressed with the rank 
and importance of the American officer, that he 
consigned his cargo and supercargo, free from 
detention and dutv^, to his official superior at New 
Orleans. Wilkinson's fine bearing and address 
would have enabled him, without an introduction, 
to have reached Governor Miro, who, in finesse, 
was more than his equal. Both men saw instinc- 
tively that they had nothing to gain by engaging 
in the dangerous and doubtful game of war. Hos- 
pitality due to an American soldier of rank was 
the first m.ove by Miro in the play of diplomacy. 
Wines of the best vintage of Spain and Portugal 
contributed greatly to the progress of the intrigue. 
By the time the cognac and cigars were reached 
his excellency could see no reason why laws or 



54 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

customs regulations should stand between friends. 
Colonel Wilkinson, being such an uncommonly 
good fellow, was at once given the freedom of the 
city, of the port and of the entire Mississippi River. 
His four cargoes of goods were landed free of all 
duty and all charges. More than this, future free 
trade was then and there declared between Louis- 
iana and this particular Kentucky colonel. 
Whether the three thousand dollar Spanish loan 
or the five thousand dollars conceded to be paid for 
bribing others or the larger sums asked for to se- 
duce Muter, Marshall and other high officials from 
allegiance to their Country, were transactions com- 
pleted at the first or second visit, cannot be 
affirmed. But the second being i^rolonged through 
the hot months of June, July and August and far 
into September, was perhaps most fruitful in re- 
sults and corruptions. The '' clothier general" 
returned to the country he had dishonored, by the 
Immaculate Conception river of the saintly Mar- 
quette, rich in available funds and opulent in an- 
ticipated glory. Wilkinson spent the years 1787-8 
in writing letters directly or indirectly to Charles 
III of Spain, so self-convicting, so explanatory of 
explanations and so intenninable in length that 
the efforts to read them may have shortened his 
majesty's life, which ended in December, 1788. A 
few extracts from this disgraceful correspondence, 
found in the Spanish archives, fully justify the 
strictures in our narrative. 

Governor Miro, on January 8, 1788, in a dis- 
patch to Spain's minister of state, says: "The 



SPANISH RULE IN LOUISIANA 55 

delivering up of Kentucky into bis majesty's 
hands, which is the main object to which Wilkin- 
son has promised to devote himself entirely, would 
forever constitute this province a rampart for the 
protection of New Spain." 

In April Wilkinson writes Miro: "I beg you 
to be easy and to be satisfied that nothing shall 
deter me from attending exclusively to the object 
we have on hand, and I am convinced that the suc- 
cess of our plan will depend on the disposition of 
the court." On May 15 the plotter introduces to 
Miro and Navarro ''My dear and venerable sirs," 
his friend, Major Isaac Dunn, as "a fit auxiliary 
in the execution of our political designs, which he 
has embraced with cordiality." On January 1, 
1789, he writes to Miro that before the new con- 
gress can do anything to frustrate their schemes, 
"we shall have become too strong to be subjected 
by any force which may be sent against us. ' ' 

Writing to the Spanish governor February 14, 
1789, Wilkinson reveals his true colors when speak- 
ing of Mr. Brown, a young man without experi- 
ence, sent as a delegate to Congress : ' ' Neverthe- 
less, as he firmly perseveres in his adherence to 
our interests, we have sent him to the new Con- 
gress, apparently as our representative, but in 
reality as a spy on the actions of that body. I 
would myself have undertaken that charge, but I 
did not for two reasons: First, my presence was 
necessary here ; and next, I should have found my- 
self under the obligation of swearing to support 
the new government, which I am in duty bound to 



56 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

oppose." Such being a minor part of the dread- 
fully insinuating and criminally compromising 
record of Wilkinson, how long could such a com- 
forter of his country's enemies have kept his head 
on his shoulders under any strict government like 
that of Elizabeth of England? Possibly forty- 
eight hours. Yuiat would have been done with 
him under the absolute rule of Napoleon I"? He 
would have been promptlj^ tried and as promptly 
shot ! And yet this bribe-giver and bribe-receiver, 
who was twice court-martialed, was spared to plot 
against the dismemberment of the republic with 
Aaron Burr, "that first of American reprobates." 
It is but just to our authorities to say that neither 
in 1796, when Wilkinson became the head of the 
army, nor in 1806, when he escaped punishment 
for treason with Burr, was there a scintilla of the 
evidence known to the officers of the law that has 
been since recovered from the archives of Spain. 
It is more difficult to reach a just conclusion 
concerning the varying course of action of that 
hardiest of frontiersman, John Sevier. He had 
fought bravely and worked laboriously to settle 
the Watauga region, between the Cumberland and 
Alleghany Mountains. In 1784 North Carolina 
agreed to cede twenty-nine million acres lying be- 
tween their own mountain boundary and the Mis- 
sissippi to the general government. To be thus 
cast off by the parent state aroused a feeling of 
unrest and rebellious discontent. A convention 
presided over by Sevier met at Jonesboro and de- 
cided to form a government for themselves. They 



SPANISH RULE IN LOUISIANA 57 

properly appealed to Congress for advice as to a 
suitable constitution. North Carolina took alarm 
and annulled tlie act of cession. The governor of 
the State commissioned Sevier to restore the reign 
of order and law, which he did with wise discretion 
and perfect good faith. In 1785 a second move- 
ment in favor of independence became so strong 
that even Sevier was carried along with it. The 
people of Holston, numbering in all about twenty- 
five thousand, sent representatives to Greenville, 
which they called their capital, and elected John 
Sevier their governor. They proposed to extend 
their territory to the bend of the Tennessee and 
include about one-third of what is now Kentucky. 
The recognition asked for from Congress was not 
forthcoming. Congress desired the North Caro- 
lina cession renewed so as to bring the separate 
territory under federal control. The State de- 
clined. Sevier held that the State could not revoke 
the first act of cession. An attempt to gain the 
influence and support of Benjamin Franklin by 
naming the proposed State Frankland or Franklin, 
signally failed. Virginia got excited over these 
events, but Congress kept cool. This trouble and 
the inability to enforce two Indian treaties caused 
General Washington to utter a timely word of wis- 
dom: "That experience has taught us that men 
will not adopt and carry into execution measures 
the best calculated for their own good, without the 
intei'vention of a coercive power." Meanwhile 
the Franklin settlers were fighting both Indians 
and each other. This could not last. In 



58 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

May, 1787, Governor Caswell of Xorth Carolina 
issued a mild but finn proclamation, and Sevier's 
territorial government of Franklin was at an end. ' ' 
The ultimatum of Spain had been brought to 
Philadelphia in May, 1785, by Diego de Gardoqui, 
her minister. It was that the free navigation of 
the lower Mississippi would not be surrendered. 
Madison expressed the prevailing thought when 
he said: ''We must bear with Spain for awhile." 
Washington showed his usual foresight when, in 
June, 1785, he wrote to Marbois: "The emigra- 
tion to the waters of the Mississippi is astonish- 
ingly great, and chiefly of a description of people 
who are not veiy subordinate to the law and con- 
stitution of the State they go from. Whether the 
prohibition, therefore, of the Spaniards is just or 
unjust, politic or impolitic, it will be with difficulty 
that people of this class can be restrained in the 
enjoyment of natural advantages." The discus- 
sions for the next two years in the Congress at 
Philadelphia were too much along sectional lines 
to be edifying or instructive. The more judicious 
did not care for sections, half sections or quarter 
sections. But all at last, including Jay, wanted 
the entire navigation by treat^^ or by force. Gar- 
dequi and Miro were working at cross purposes 
and at the end of 1788, at odds. Miro 's chief sup- 
ports were Wilkinson and McGillivray, and both 
had failed him. The man who had long tried to 
detach Kentucky from the Union collapsed when 
the young patriot, Andrew Jackson, brought to 
Tennessee the glorious tidings that the constitution 



SPANISH RULE IN LOUISIANA 59 

under which we now live and prosper had been 
ratified, and that disorder and disintegration were 
at an end. 

A general census, ordered in 1788, shows the 
following distribution of population: 

LOWER LOUISIANA. 

New Orleans 5338 

To the Balize 2378 

Terre Aux Beufs 661 

Bayous St. John and Gentilly. . . . 772 

Barrataria 40 

Tchoupitoulas Parish 7589 

Parish of St. Charles 2381 

St. John Baptist 1368 

St. James • 1551 

La Fourche 1164 

La Fourche Interior 1500 

Iberville 944 

Point Coupee Parish 2004 

Oppelousas 1985 

Attakapas 2541 

New Iberia 190 

Washita 232 

Rapides 147 

Avoyelles 209 

Natchitoches 1021 

Arkansas settlements 119 

UPPER LOUISIANA. 

St. Louis ^ 1197 

St. Genevieve 896 



60 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

WEST FLORIDA. 

Manchac and Galveston 552 

Baton Kouge 682 

Feliciana 730 

Xatchez 2679 

Mobile 1468 

Pensacola 265 

Aggregate population 42,611 

Being an increase cf ten thousand in three years. 
About twenty thousand of these were white inhab- 
itants. 

The settlements in Kentucky and Tennessee had 
in 1788 a population of eight}' thousand. 

It should be borne in mind that when that vast 
region called Louisiana was divided into nine dis- 
tricts in 1723, not only Missouri, but what is now 
Kansas, Iowa and much more territoiy, belonged 
to the district of Illinois. This district was first 
in extent and second in population. Fort Chartres 
was the chief place and first seat of justice. The 
next clief-lieu of the district was St. Louis, to which 
the transfer was comjileted of civil officers and 
troops on October 10, 1765. Twenty years later 
came the year of the great waters. The flood of 
1785, like those of 1844 and 1851, invaded Main 
street, a part of which became navigable for ca- 
noes. The first settlement of Ohio began at Mari- 
etta in 1788, the year that the capable governor, 
Manuel Perez, succeeds his worthy predecessor, 
Commandant General Crazat, at the St. Louis mil- 
itarj^ fortification and civil capital. 



SPANISH RULE IN LOUISIANA 61 

A notable reference to the subject so generally 
discussed prior to 1789 may fitly close our relation, 
and is found in a letter from Thomas Jefferson, 
dated Paris, January 25, 1786: 

"Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest 
from which all America, North and South, is to 
be peopled. We should take care, too, not to think 
it for the interest of that great continent to press 
too soon on the Spaniards. Those countries can- 
not be in better hands. My fear is that they are 
too feeble to hold them till our population can be 
sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece 
by piece. The navigation of the Mississippi we 
must have. This is all we are as yet ready to re- 
ceive." 



CHAPTER V. 

THE FIRST PRESIDENT. 

steps to secure free navigation. — this great 
government's real beginning. 

IN a technical sense constitutional government 
under our benign supreme law of the land, 
dates from March 4, 1789. In an actual 
sense the salutary supremacy of the consti- 
tution, to use the words of Washington, was not 
felt until after April 30, 1789, the day when the 
hero or heroes took the oath of office under Chan- 
cellor Livingston at the corner of Broad and Wall 
streets, New York. 

The laggard patriots of the House of Represen- 
tatives found present a bare quorum of thirty mem- 
bers on April 1. On April 6 enough of the loiter- 
ing Senators arrived to enable the First Congress 
to organize and proceed to the business of inaug- 
urating the first chief of state. Prior to the first 
President's departure from Mt. Vernon he learned 
that sinister schemes on the part of Great Britain 
and Spain threatened the internal peace of the 
Union. The Spanish authorities at New Orleans 
long held out as a bait the free navigation of the 
^lississippi, to the up-river inhabitants if they 
would cut loose from the United States. Lord Dor- 
chester, governor general of Canada, was suspected 

63 



THE FIRST PRESIDENT 63 

of promising a helping band to the frontiersmen 
who might feel disposed to seize New Orleans. 
Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury, gave 
the British agent in New York to understand that 
he might dismiss all fears about having a stable 
administration to deal with. The Republic was 
now able to protect and control the governed. A 
government by supplication, a political monstros- 
ity with thirteen heads, had passed forever away. 

North Carolina came into the Union in Novem- 
ber, 1789, and on February 25, 1790, the State 
ceded to the United States the territory now known 
as Tennessee. None of the thirty thousand inhab- 
itants made known their wishes concerning this 
change for the better. The dignified William 
Blount, of North Carolina, became first territorial 
governor in October, 1790. Our hardy old heroes, 
Robertson and Sevier, having obtained forgiveness 
for their sins of indiscretion and rashness, were 
made generals commanding the Eastern and West- 
em military districts. 

Soon after Washington came into office he found 
that the Southwestern Indians were disposed to 
give much trouble. He endeavored to make peace 
with the Creek Indians and with other tribes, but 
learned that the troublesome chief, Alexander Mc- 
Gillivray, ever stood in the way. As a last resort 
this dangerous and treacherous half breed was in- 
vited to visit New York, the temporary capital, in 
hope that his bloody-mindedness might be molli- 
fied by some pecuniary consolation. 

With twenty-eight of his chief warriors in his 



64 TRE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

train this feather-bedecked and paint-coated 
savage was received on his route with royal liber- 
ality and distinction. The Tammany Society, of 
New York, which Aaron Burr had recently organ- 
ized, tried to impress the forest chiefs with their 
own semi-savage paraphernalia and bogus Indian 
toggery, but the genuine child of the forest gave 
only the guttural grunt of contempt for such 
shams. When this Scotch freebooter or land 
pirate got down to business it was found that all he 
wanted was a monopoly of furnishing the sup- 
plies to the Creeks ; one hundred thousand dollars 
for tlie alleged confiscation of his lands in Georgia, 
and the pay and rank of a brigadier general in the 
United States army, for life. 

While this almost equaled the Algerine pirates 
in the direction of levying blackmail, the govern- 
ment commissioners recommended compliance 
with the stand-and-deliver demands, so anxious 
were our border settlers to be saved from the hor- 
rors of prolonged Indian wars. A treaty with this 
chief gave us all the territoiy north and east of the 
Oconee River in Georgia. 

While promising to place his tribe under our 
protection, this double deceiver was at this precise 
time in the pay of Spain and Great Britain. The 
red-skinned rascal so played upon the sympathies 
of General Knox and even Washington, that the 
latter gave the Creek chief a pair of his epaulets 
and some books, the latter doubtless intended for 
his moral elevation. It is gravely related that on 
more than one spectacular or war-path occasion 



THE FIRST PRESIDENT 65 

this thrifty diplomatist of the wilderness would 
don a scarlet red British uniform and General 
Washington's epaulets, which, with his Spanish 
cocked hat and paint-smeared face, presented a 
sight never to be forgotten by gods or men! x\t 
this time— 1790— Wilkinson, a once formidable en- 
emy of National supremacy, was whining: "My 
situation is extremely painful, since, abhorring du- 
plicity, I must dissemble." If he had said, since 
' ' doting on duplicity, I am forced to the wall, ' ' he 
would have approached nearer the truth. His 
duf)es, except Sebastian, had deserted him and 
Governor Miro was about to pension another traitor 
to watch him. 

ATTITUDE OF AMEEICANS. 

In presenting next in our narrative history, the 
facts of record, it seems fairest to let each cabinet 
officer and public man make known himself his at- 
titude on the extension of our territory. On July 
11, 1790, Jefferson, referring to the spirited prep- 
arations of England now seemingly bent on war 
with Spain, writes to James Monroe: "Other 
symptoms indicate a general design on all Louisi- 
ana and the two Floridas. What a tremendous 
position would success in these objects place us 
in! Embraced from the St. Croix to St. Mary's 
on the one side by their possessions, on the other 
by their fleet, we need not hesitate to say that they 
would soon find means to unite to them all the ter- 
ritory covered by the ramifications of the Missis- 
sippi. ' ' 

5 



66 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Just one month later, President Washington 
writes to Lafayette : ' ' Gradually advancing in our 
task of civil government, unentangled in the 
crooked politics of Europe, wanting scarcely any- 
thing but the full navigation of the Mississippi 
(which we must have and as certainly shall have 
as we remain a nation), I have supposed that, with 
the undeviating exercise of a just, steady and pru- 
dent National policy, we shall be the gainers, 
whether the powers of the Old World may be in 
peace or war, but more especially in the latter case. 
* * * Should a war take place between Great 
Britain and Spain, I conceive, from a great variety 
of concurring circumstances, there is the highest 
probabilit}^ that the Floridas will soon be in the 
possession of the former." In tlie same letter, 
Washington advises Sjjain to be wise and liberal 
at once and annihilate all cause of difference be- 
tween that nation and his own. 

On August 2, 1790, the Secretary of State, in- 
structed by the cabinet, wrote to Carmichael at 
Madrid: "With this information, written and 
oral, you will be enabled to meet the minister in 
conversations on the subject of the navigation of 
the Mississippi, to which we wish you to lead his 
attention immediately. Impress him thoroughly 
with the necessity of an early and even an immedi- 
ate settlement of this matter of a return to the 
field of negotiation for this purpose; and though 
it must be done delicately, yet he must be made to 
understand unequivocally, that a resumption of 
the negotiation is not desired on our part, unless 



THE FIRST PRESIDENT 67 

he can determine, in the first opening of it, to yield 
the immediate and full enjoyment of that naviga- 
tion. * * * It is impossible to answer for the 
forbearance of our Western citizens. We endeavor 
to quiet them with the expectation of an attain- 
ment of their rights by peaceable means. But 
should they, in a moment of impatience, hazaid 
others, there is no saying how far we may be led ; 
for neither themselves nor their rights will ever be 
abandoned by us. ' ' 

This peremptory language was to be used in case 
the threatened war between Great Britain and 
Spain assumed a grave aspect. A milder tone was 
to be employed if it was averted and Spain still 
remained in a position to successfully resist our 
demands by force. William Pitt was using strong 
expressions to induce Spain to submit to us, but 
so long as the expectation existed that the "fam- 
ily compact" would make an ally of France 
against England, the latter 's influence was not 
sersdceable to us. However, when Lord Dorches- 
ter's request came for the privilege to transfer the 
British troops over our territory to attack the 
Spaniards in Louisiana, in the event of war, 
Washington was disposed to grant the request. 

On this subject, Hamilton reported September 
15, 1790: "The conduct of Spain toward us pre- 
sents a picture far less favorable. The direct aid 
we received from her during the war was incon- 
siderable compared with her faculty of aiding us. 
She refrained from acknowledging our independ- 
ence ; has never acceded to the treaty of commerce 



^ 



68 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

made witli France, though a right of doing so was 
resented to her, nor made any other treaty with us ; 
she lias maintained possessions within our acknowl- 
edged limits without our consent; she persever- 
ingly obstructs our sharing in the navigation of 
the Mississippi, though it is a privilege essential 
to us, and to which we consider ourselves as hav- 
ing an indisputable title. * * * 

"An increase of the means of annoying us in 
the same hands is a certain ill consequence of the 
acquisition of the Floridas and Louisiana by the 
British. This will result not only from contiguity 
to a greater part of our territory, but from the in- 
creased facility of acquiring undivided influence 
over all the Indian tribes inhabiting within the 
borders of the United States. Additional danger 
of the dismemberment of the Western country is 
another ill consequence to be apprehended from 
that acquisition. * * * An explicit recognition 
of our right to navigate the Mississippi to and from 
the ocean, with the possession of New Orleans, 
would greatly mitigate the causes of apprehension 
from the conquest of the Floridas by the British. 
* * * The Western posts on one side and the 
navigation of the Mississippi on the other, call 
for a vigilant attention to what is going on. They 
are both of importance. The securing of the latter 
may be regarded in its consequences as essential 
to the unity of the empire. * * * ^q ought 
not to leave in the possession of any foreign power 
the territories at the mouth of the Mississippi, 
which are to be regarded as the key to it." 



THE FIRST PRESIDENT 69 

William Carmichael wrote from Madrid, Janu- 
ary 24, 1791 : ' ' This govermnent is weak ; the min- 
istry is in a ticklish situation; the queen governs 
and governs with caprice ; the people begin to dis- 
pute their sovereigns; and although they have no 
chiefs to look up to, the dissatisfaction is general. ' ' 
Count de Campomanes at this time expressed the 
enlightened opinion, ''that it is the interest of his 
country to form liberal and lasting connections 
with the United States." 

AFFAIES WITH ENGLAND. 

Our affairs with England during the first term 
of Washington were as little satisfactory as were 
our unsettled disputes with Spain. Hammond, the 
first accredited British minister, had apparently 
been sent over to wrangle, spy and palaver and 
thus delay the inevitable day for the evacuation of 
the British posts. He and Jefferson rehearsed for 
about the fifth time each, how the country of the 
other had been guilty of the first infractions of the 
peace treaty and the criminations and recrimina- 
tions lowered somewhat the diplomatic dignity of 
both men. The fact that Virginians owed Eng- 
land about ten million dollars of ante bellum war 
debts was a sore point with the Secretary of State, 
and to inflict a return blow he bluntly charged that 
the British were indirectly responsible for all the 
Indian raids and massacres that had happened 
during and since the Revolutionary War. The 
dignified and scholarly Thomas Pinckney showed 
a better temper in London, although his mission 



70 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

was at first barren of results. But four years later 
this ablest of the four historic Pinckneys cleverly 
negotiated our first and most important treaty with 
Spain, the wise Treaty of 1795. 

During the whole of Washington's first four 
years he was harassed by the fierce hostilities of 
the Indians. The Wabash tribes and their allies 
in the Northwest at this time numbered about 
thirty thousand. They defeated Brigadier-Gen- 
eral Harmar and Major-General Arthur St. Clair 
with serious loss to the Americans. These two 
officers, who were not sufficiently cautious and 
wary, encountered superior forces of more expe- 
rienced fighters, who were better led. The poli- 
ticians who blamed General Knox for these 
reverses would themselves probably have done 
worse. They certainly could not have done bet- 
ter than when Washington and Knox organized 
victory a little later under the "warrior who never 
sleeps," the dashing Major-General Anthony 
Wayne. 

The Southwestern Indians, who were more 
numerous, were encouraged to commit depreda- 
tions and go on forays by Governor Miro, other 
Spanish and perhaps some British agents. Still, 
the revengeful Chickamaugas, the Creeks and the 
Cherokees did not require much encouragement to 
kill, which was their chief occupation. In Ken- 
tucky, which became a State in the Union in 1792, 
tlie great abilities of Governor Isaac Shelby were 
taxed to the utmost to repel the Indian marauders 
and thwart the schemes of the irrepressible Wil- 



TEE FIRST PRESIDENT 71, 

kinson, who, for years after taking the oath of 
allegiance to the United States, carried Spanish 
pensions in his pocket and conducted treasonable 
corresiDondence with official agents of Spain. This 
unique scoundrel can fairly claim the second or 
third iDlace or niche in the American hall of ill 
fame with Arnold and Burr. 

In the Cumberland region the settlers were 
passing through the darkness that preceded the 
dawn of liberty and union. 

The Creek chief, McGillivray, being in 1792 
under larger pay from the Spanish government 
than from ours, is again trying to unite all the 
Indian tribes against the Americans. In pursu- 
ance of this stimulating policy a party of two 
hundred Chickamaugas crossed the Tennessee 
Eiver and falling upon the more exposed settle- 
ments, butchered all but one of a family of ten 
persons, leaving them groaning, bleeding and 
expiring on the floor of the lonely frontier cabin. 
A child of six years, having the instinctive intel- 
ligence to conceal himself in the flue of the chim- 
ney, dropped down from his hiding place and 
stepping over the bloody bodies of father, mother, 
brothers and sisters, fled through the woods for 
two miles in the darkness of midnight to a haven 
of seeming safety. The horrible tale of this home- 
less and motherless child caused all the mothers 
of Tennessee to tremble and press their own babes 
closer to their breasts, since now at night the 
dreadful le cri de mort was often heard. 

Valentine Sevier, who fought with his renowned 



72 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

brother, John, at King's Mountain, had three 
valiant sons who hastened to join General Robert- 
son and risk their lives to prevent atrocities that 
would have disgraced even the Natchez barbarians. 
These brave young men with others were rowing 
up the Cumberland Eiver to Nashville to proffer 
their services to Robertson. They had reached 
a sharp bend in this winding stream when an in- 
stantaneous discharge from a hundred Indian 
rifles killed the three nephews of John Sevier. 
But in the darkest of these dreadful pioneer days 
in Tennessee, the undaunted Robertson expressed 
the feeling of the other brave men battling against 
savage odds when he serenely said : ' ' We may be 
cut off in the struggle, but let us hold fast our 
faith, our innocence, our integritj^, our honor and 
our Government." An Indian's bullet tore 
through Robertson's arm from wrist to elbow, but 
still he would not lead his men into the enemy's 
country, because restrained by military orders 
from Philadelphia. 

Emboldened by the defensive attitude of the 
frontiersmen, seven hundred Creeks, Cherokee and 
Shawnee warriors attacked Buchanan's station, 
just four miles from Nashville, from which they 
were repulsed with heavy slaughter. Fifteen rifle- 
men, thirty women and forty children, made a 
defense of this fiercely assailed blockhouse, which 
for desperate courage and sagacious bravery 
equals any like defense found in the annals of 
heroism. The men reserved their fire until the 
Indians came within ten paces ; then having three 



THE FIRST PRESIDENT 73 

rifles each, the women loaded their rifles, hand- 
ing them to the men loaded, so that a continuous 
fire was kept up, rendered more galling by a num- 
ber of the women, botli loading and firing with 
the men. The children were kept busy raising 
hats upon sticks before the most open port holes, 
which ruse drew the Indian fire. As certain death 
was the consequence of defeat, the price on each 
life was placed at the maximum rate. Castleman, 
Rains, Mrs. Buchanan, Joseph Brown and the 
relentless Robertson are the only undying names 
on record to preserve the memory of the most 
brilliant defense ever made against savage war- 
fare. Robertson snorted like the warhorse he was 
at the sound of battle and the boom of his one 
swivel gun warned the Indians that he -would be 
on them at daylight. They retreated with celerity, 
dragging their wounded and dead. 

To the philosophic reader the connection of all 
this with the acquisition of Louisiana is plain. 
Had not the Eastern tributaries of the Mississippi 
been reddened with the blood of brave men, and 
had not a line of States on the east side of that 
river been gained and retained through this 
bravery and loyalty and also by the firmness, fore- 
sight and wisdom of our first administration in 
preventing the Spanish from separating a large 
belt of territory from us on the settled side of the 
dividing river, we should not have gotten over to 
the unsettled west side so soon as we did. Far- 
reaching events are usually preceded by significant 
approaches to them. 



CHAPTER YI. 

WASHINGTON'S SECOND TERM. 

LOUISIANA FKOM MARCH, 1793, TO 1797 — YOUNG 
NATION BESET BY ENEMIES. 

EVENTS and developments of large signifi- 
cance and far-reacliing importance made 
memorable the Presidency of Washing- 
ton. The public credit and whole finan- 
cial system of the United States was created by 
Hamilton from fiscal chaos and founded on a rock 
as solid and enduring as the earth we stand on. 
The pemianent seat of government was fixed. 
Political parties took their origin and adjusted 
themselves on lines of support or opposition to 
the policies of Washington. Vennont, Kentucky 
and Tennessee were admitted into the national 
Union. 

In April, 1793, the neutralit^^ proclamation 
proved the wisdom of the nation, like an indi- 
vidual, attending strict!}^ to its own business. The 
next^ year witnessed the ever-glorious victoiy of 
Anthon}' Wayne over the Indians at Fallen Tim- 
bers, and the suppression of the whisky insurgents 
in Pennsylvania. The Indian peace treaty of 
Greenville negotiated by Wayne; the Jay treatj'' 
with England and the Pinckney treaty with Spain, 
made the year 1795 a year to be remembered. 

74 



WASHINGTON'S SECOND TERM 75 

Less agreeable to remember is, tliat, in 1796, we 
paid the plundering Algerine pirates three-quar- 
ters of a million dollars for the ransom of pris- 
oners, for bribes and for the recognition of our 
consul. And all because the Oregon, the Olympia 
and the Brooklyn were not then afloat ! 

It is perhaps not widely known that the infant 
Eepublic had a desperate struggle to survive its 
infancy. The indisputable historic truth is that it 
was set upon and assailed by as evilly-designing a 
combination of enemies and as malign a concentra- 
tion of enmities, as ever assaulted the fairest polit- 
ical work of human hands. 

George III, down to the date of his insanity, 
entertained a deep-seated dislike for his disloyal 
American subjects. William Pitt, who had gone 
into office and out of office with Lord Shelburne, 
felt none of his patron's ardent desire for a last- 
ing peace with America. He was playing politics 
for a permanent tenure of office and hostility to 
the new republic was then the winning political 
card. A son of the illustrious statesman and 
orator. Lord Chatham, Pitt was reaping the benefit 
of the reaction that always comes when a truly 
great man is treated with ingratitude or injustice. 
Besides this aid, he understood the power of the 
dinner table better than any public man of the last 
century. While the eloquent Chatham tried to 
make his hopeful son a great orator, he succeeded 
in making him only a great declaimer and great 
politician. The British cabinet from the date of 
Shelburne 's retirement, in 1783, whether the con- 



76 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

trolling spirit was Fox, North or Pitt, was openly 
or covertly hostile to the new Republic. Whether 
at war with France, with Spain, or ostensibly at 
peace, England was, until recent years, always at 
war with this country. That monarchy long tried 
to maintain a cordon of stations and settlements 
to connect her dominions in Canada with her 
dominions, past or j)rospective, in liOuisiana and 
the Floridas. With sinister intent she sent agents 
to the Mississippi, to Kentucky, to the Indians, 
and sent fur traders everywhere, to foment strife 
and enmity against the inheritors of freedom. In 
holding fast to the military posts, contrary to ex- 
press treaty stipulations, the unnatural motlier 
seemed to be waiting near by and eagerly expect- 
ing to share the territorial spoils and political 
plunder from her offspring's wrecked Republic. 
To witness brave men battling against odds, which 
is said to inspire the sympathy of the noblest gods, 
seemed not to develop a sympathetic softness in 
the heaii;. of Mother England. 

France, too, was plundering our ships at sea 
and in her prize courts, with all the alacrity and 
inherited skill of the Norse pirates and laud rob- 
bers, from whom the inhabitants of Northern 
France were chiefly descended. This once most 
helpful friend was sending agents to Louisiana to 
foment insurrection among the French inhabitants 
there, with the hope of profiting by the downfall 
of Spanish power, which was threatened by the 
virtual closing by Spain of the navigation of the 
great continental river. From and after the death 



WASHINGTON'S SECOND TERM 77 

of Count de Vergennes, the first, firmest and most 
serviceable friend this Republic ever had in 
Europe, the policy of France was reversed and 
that country was made antagonistic by Montmorin, 
Le Brun and other small men, who were filling the 
high place of the great Vergennes; while still 
smaller men, such as Genet, Fauchet and Adet, 
were sent to bring discredit and dishonor upon 
France, in America. "Citizen Genet" introduced 
here the bull-in-a-China-shop brand of diplomacy. 
He landed at Charleston ; began at once fitting out 
privateers and opening recruiting offices; got ves- 
sels to sea by lying about their character and des- 
tination; joined the Secretary of State in organ- 
izing Jacobin, or Democratic, societies in Penn- 
sylvania, KentuclrT- and elsewhere, which clubs, 
Washington declared, "caused and encouraged" 
the whislvy insurrection ; wound up his demagogue 
diplomacy by villifying the government for its 
strict neutrality and, threatening to appeal from 
the President to the people, was fired out of the 
country suddenlj'', his velocity being accelerated by 
the square-toed boot of the indignant chief magis- 
trate. 

And the once proud but to-day prostrate Spain 
joined the yelp and cry, growing loud and louder 
against a feeble nation, impoverished and ex- 
hausted by a desolating war, ready to seize all the 
territory in sight, in the crash that would follow 
the failure of the republican experiment. Godoy, 
the despicable paramour of the queen of Spain, 
was then controlling and blighting Spain's desti- 



78 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

nies ; Gardoqui was hostile at all times and every- 
where, as usual, and Governor Miro was spending 
his last days at New Orleans, prior to his promo- 
tion, in tampering with and tempting the hard- 
pressed frontier Americans -and promising them 
free navigation, free trade and free everything if 
they would only bow down and worship, not Satan, 
but Godoy and his royal mistress. 

Time brings its retributions and mortals are 
permitted to witness examples not merely of poetic 
but of divine justice. The Spain which snubbed 
Jay, Short, CaiTQichael and other American 
agents, a little more than a century ago, is about 
the last country in the world to attempt such antics 
now. And singular to say, the three loading mon- 
archies of Europe that, after the death of Franklin 
in 1790, abused our patience and wronged us most, 
are now gently playing second violin to Russia, 
Germany and the great Republic, which have taken 
their stately places as the world's most potent 
powers of the twentieth century. 

Adding to these complications, nearly sixty 
thousand savages in the Northwest and Southwest 
were lurking on the exposed frontiers of the new- 
bom Union. Hundreds of brave men had gone 
down under their murderous rifles and tomahawks 
at Blue Licks, at the defeat of Harmar, and on 
the retreat of St. Clair. The pioneer families on 
the frontier knew not, when their sole support 
went forth each day to win bread from the soil, 
that they would ever see him again alive. The 
nightly war whoop startled the cattle in the fields 



WASHINGTON'S SECOND TERM 79 

and the babes in the cradle! The burning of 
Washington's personal friend, Colonel Crawford, 
at the stake and before the eyes of the infamous 
Simon Girty, called for an end to such unspeak- 
able atrocities. 

Yet worse in one sense and manifestly more dis- 
tressing than the hostilities of the Englishmen, the 
Frenchmen, the Spaniards, and the Indians, was 
the war made on the first administration by the 
Virginia and other politicians. That public men 
from his own State, who knew him well and knew 
that his motives were lofty and pure, should im- 
pugn every motive and oppose every act, was what 
the high-bred Washington: could never understand. 
An unselfish patriot in every breath that he drew, 
he did not know that ambitious men played a cun- 
ning game called ''politics," and that they some- 
times played for as high stakes as his own high 
place. Allured by such a dazzling prize as the 
Presidency for eight years, what politicians of 
ambition and ability would not play any concerted 
combination game to win? Three Virginia neigh- 
bors found the winter evenings long when far from 
home and well adapted for developing compre- 
hensive schemes for their mutual advantage. 
When the facts compel us to affimi that Washing- 
ton's trusted confidant, Madison, reversed himself 
in a night and from the leader of the administra- 
tion became the leader of the opposition in the 
House of Representatives, we need not recall the 
baser treachery of others to prove the first Presi- 
dent's distracting trials and mental agonies. Op- 



80 TEE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

posed in Cabinet, Senate and House in every line 
of his policy by the three most controlling men of 
his own State, it need hardly cause suii^rise that 
groans of pain escaped him, that "He would 
rather be in his grave at Mt. Vernon than be the 
emperor of the world!" The Constitution being 
on trial, the fiercest fight came on its right inter- 
l^retation. This was the political Valley Forge 
that Washington passed through, compared with 
the sufferings of which the Valley Forge of the 
Eevolution was the seat of luxury! But with the 
aid of Hamilton, Jay, Wilson and Ames, he gave 
the interpretations afterwards declared true by 
Marshall, Story and Webster, and from which 
have flowed unnumbered blessings to the "more 
perfect" and more stable Union and to every State 
in the Louisiana region. 

But the Lord of justice, slow to wrath, at last 
allowed his hand to fall heavily upon the demons 
of the forest. In 1794, General James Robertson 
directed Colonel AVliitely and Major Orr to attack 
the Chickamauga savages near their hiding place 
on tlie Tennessee River. These gallant soldiers 
delivered a crushing blow. The same year, Gen- 
eral Wayne, aided by Piomingo and one hundred 
and twenty Chickasaw warriors, gained such an 
ovei'whelming victoiy over the Northwestern 
tribes that they were all eager to sue for peace. 
This soldier-negotiator's treaty of Greenville put 
an end to Indian wars, until another great Indian 
fighter and treaty-maker, Old Tippecanoe, nobly 
filled Wayne's high place in history. The Jay; 



WASHINGTON'S SECOND TERM 81 

treaty of 1795 brought about the peaceful sur- 
render of all the British posts in June and July, 
1796, and put an end to the British depredations 
upon our commerce. Although violently opposed 
by the Spanish agents, by Citizen Genet, Citizen 
Jefferson, Citizen Monroe, in short, by all the for- 
eign and domestic enemies of the Government, it 
passed the Senate by a vote of twenty to ten. 
Spanish exactions, plottings and outrages were 
temporarily ended by Thomas Pinclmey's treaty 
of October 27, 1795, which conceded free naviga- 
tion and the boundary, on the south, established 
by the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain. 

Baron de Carondelet became governor of Louis- 
iana and West Florida on January 1, 1792. The 
population of New Orleans at the end of that year 
was six thousand. The revenues were but seven 
thousand dollars. The lighting of the streets and 
the employment of watchmen then began. The 
slave trade with the coast of Africa was encour- 
aged by the Spanish king. Trade with Philadel- 
phia was favored and increased by Philadelphia 
merchants establishing branch houses in New 
Orleans. Some six or more subjects of French 
extraction, who showed an uncommon interest 
about 1793 in the republican movement in France, 
were imprisoned in Havana for a year. Strong 
fortifications were built above and below the city. 
Fort St. Philip was erected by this governor on 
the Plaquemines. Citizen Genet's two expeditions 
planned to move down the Mississippi, caused 
some alarm in 1794, but soon proved abortive. 



82 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

The United States Government suddenly stopped 
his active recruiting business. Le Moniteur de la 
Louisiane made its appearance this year. There 
was also completed the cathedral built by Don 
Andre Almonaster at his own expense. A hospital 
also had been built and endowed by him. 

The scheming of the Marquis de ^laisonrouge, 
Gayoso de Lemos and others, with Sebastian and 
Power, two renegade Americans, to separate the 
western countr^^ from the United States came to 
naught. An attempted slave insurrection in 1795 
was promptly and summarily suppressed by 
Baron Carondelet by killing twenty-five, hanging 
fifty and flogging as many more. The free naviga- 
tion of the Mississippi from its source to the sea, 
under the treaty of San Lorenzo, was reasonably 
enjoyed by the up-river Americans for three or 
four years. With a view of inducing French 
royalists and other desirable immigrants to settle 
in Louisiana, Governor Carondelet made large 
grants of lands to Baron de Bastrop and other 
men of consequence. One of these important 
grants of mineral lands was to an officer of the 
roj^al navy of France, who had lost all his prop- 
erty in the vortex of the French revolution, soon 
in bloody progress. James Ceran De Lassus, the 
father of Governor De Lassus, in 1796 first ap- 
pears on the shifting scene, but both are resented 
to be discussed in the story of Upper Louisiana 
from 1790 to 1800. 



CHAPTER YII. 

LOUISIANA DURING THE TERM OF JOHN 
ADAMS. 

FORESIGHT OF HAMILTON — MOEE TROUBLE WITH 
SPAIN — ST. LOUIS SERENCE. 

IF we knew exactly what about forty of our 
foremost historic men have said and have 
done, we would then know the most valuable 
and most instructive part of American his- 
tory. Behind all great events are great men. The 
man or men who made the Louisiana treaty and 
the statesmen who were behind that prodigious 
acquisition are in the first group of the benefactors 
of their Countr3^ 

The most significant act or utterance by Wash- 
ington along the line of this large subject is found 
in the Farewell Address, that greatest of all state 
papers, unless we except the Constitution itself. 
This lofty patriot declares : ' ' One of the expedients 
which the partisans of faction employ toward 
strengthening their influence by local discrimina- 
tions is to misrepresent the opinions and views of 
rival districts. The people at large cannot be too 
much on their guard against the jealousies which 
grow out of these misrepresentations. They tend 
to render alien to each other those who ought to 
be tied together by fraternal affection. The peo- 

83 



84 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

pie of the western country have lately had a use- 
ful lesson on this subject. They have seen in the 
negotiation by the executive, and in the unani- 
mous ratification of the treaty with Spain by the 
Senate, and in the unusual satisfaction at that 
event in all parts of the country, a decisive proof 
how unfounded have been the suspicions instilled 
in them of a policy in the Atlantic Stat-es and in 
the different departments of the general govern- 
ment, hostile to their interests in relation to the 
Mississippi." In these parting words the first 
President obviously refers to the San Lorenzo or 
Pinckney treaty of 1795. Although issued from 
Philadelphia, like all of Washington's official 
papers, it is dated from the "United States," to 
show the intense and unchanging nationalism of 
the man. 

The statesman that the Father of his Country 
most leaned upon and most loved, and who was 
placed nearest to himself in war and in peace, was 
Alexander Hamilton. On page 514 of Hamilton's 
works, volume 4, issued by the Putnams, we find 
these pertinent observations : ' ' Who can say how 
far British colonization may spread southward 
and down the west side of the Mississij^pi, north- 
ward and westward into the vast interior regions 
toward the Pacific Ocean? Can we view it as a 
matter of indifference that this new world event- 
ually is laid open to our enterprise, to an enter- 
prise seconded by immense advantages already 
mentioned, of a more improved state of industry? 
Can we be insensible that the precedent furnishes 



TERM OF JOHN ADAMS 85 

us witli a cogent and persuasive argument to 
bring Spain to a similar arrangement 1 And can 
we be blind to the great interest we have in obtain- 
ing a free communication with all the great terri- 
tories that environ our country from the St. 
Mary's to the St. Croix?" This public utterance 
was as early as 1795. 

On January 26, 1799, Hamilton writes a letter 
from New York to Harrison Gray Otis in which 
these remarkable tlioughts occur: ''As it is every 
moment possible that the project of taking pos- 
session of the Floridas and Louisiana, long since 
attributed to France, may be attempted to be put 
in execution, it is very important that the execu- 
tive should be clothed with the power to meet and 
defeat so dangerous an enterprise. Indeed, if it 
is the policy of France to leave us in a state of 
semi-hostility, 'tis preferable to terminate it, and 
by taking possession of those countries for our- 
selves, to obviate the mischief of their falling into 
the hands of an active foreign power, and at the 
same time to secure to the United States the advan- 
tage of keeping the key of the western country. 
I have been long in the habit of considering the 
acquisition of those countries as essential to the 
permanency of the Union, which I consider as 
very important to the welfare of the whole." 
Here our wisest practical statesman lays down, 
four years and three months before the Louisiana 
treaty is made, four vital propositions: First, 
That we should take possession of Louisiana and 
the Floridas for ourselves. Second, We should 



86 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

not allow tliem to fall into the hands of an aggres- 
sive foreign power. Third, The United States 
must keep the key to the up-river western country. 
Fourth, That the acquisition of Louisiana and 
Florida were essential to the perpetuitj^ of the 
American Union. 

This indisputable proof of the earliest and clear- 
est, the most progressive and aggressive declara- 
tion in favor of the possession of this enonnous 
contiguous territory, makes Hamilton the chief 
l^romoter of the Louisiana acquisition, unless we 
find that prior to 1803 other statesmen went 
farther in this desirable direction. This many- 
sided genius was at this time the ranking major- 
general of the United States anny, next in author- 
ity to Washington by that matchless hero's own 
choice and insistence. 

The Natchez district, confirmed to us by the 
Pinckney treaty with Spain, did not come into the 
full possession of the United States until 1798. In 
a message to Congress dated June 12, 1797, Presi- 
dent Adams said: "This country is rendered 
peculiarly valuable by its inhabitants, who are 
represented to amount to nearly four thousand, 
generally well affected and much attached to tlie 
United States and zealous for the establishment 
of a government under their authority. I there- 
fore recommend the erecting of a government in 
the district of Natchez, similar to that established 
for the territory northwest of the River Ohio, but 
with certain modifications relative to titles or 
claims of land, whether of individuals or com- 



TEEM OF JOHN ADAMS 87 

panies, or to claims of jurisdiction of any indi- 
vidual State." 

Tlie much-in-controversy Natchez district, which 
became the Mississippi territory, was bounded on 
the west by the great river, on the south by the 
thirty-first parallel of latitude and on the north 
by a line drawn due east from the mouth of the 
Yazoo to the Chattahoochee River, its eastern 
boundary. 

We shall only epitomize the many pages of his- 
tory relating to the reluctant transfer by Spain 
of a region which was ours by plain treaty stipu- 
lation. It was a tooth-pulling, agonizing process. 
The American commissioner was Colonel Andrew 
Ellicott, who had rendered valuable services in 
laying out and surveying the city of Washington. 
He was ably assisted in his delicate mission by two 
brave and discreet Regular Army officers, Captain 
Isaac Guion and Lieutenant Piercy S. Pope. 

Colonel Ellicott established his camp on an 
eminence in Natchez, about five hundred yards 
from the well-garrisoned Spanish Fort Panmure. 
Here he displayed mast-high the flag of the 
United States, demanded the surrender of the fort, 
and, declining the many pressing invitations to go 
to New Orleans, or elsewhere, announced that he 
would not move, except to the point where he was 
to begin surveying the line of demarkation. In 
the meantime General Wayne had sent Lieutenant 
Pope with forty men to occupy a post within sup- 
porting distance. The gallant Pope reported to 
the resolute Ellicott his readiness for action. That 



88 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

both soldiers were lieroes appears from a letter ad- 
dressed to liis "Fellow-Citizens of the District of 
Natchez" by Pope, approved by Ellicott, in which 
the former declares: "I will, at all hazards, pro- 
tect the citizens of the United States from every 
act of hostility-." This courageous course of 
action in the presence of a much superior Spanish 
force brought a happy issue out of one of the most 
serious of our many differences with Spain. 
Gayoso de Lemos, the Spanish commissioner, who 
became governor of Louisiana while these troubles 
were pending, was in artifice, procrastination and 
prevarication a past grand master. To poGtpone 
delivering the district and to stave off the inevit- 
able hour, he said he had to go to New Orleans; 
pretended to have no instructions ; had asked for 
instructions and must wait their arrival; was 
threatened with an invasion from Canada; was 
liable to an attack by Great Britain by sea, and so 
on ad infinitum. The plain truth was he was try- 
ing to incite the Indians to make war on us; he 
was still doling out bribes to those despicable 
traitors, Thomas Powers, Benjamin Sebastian and 
other base deserters. Both he and Carondelet were 
talking and playing anti-administration politics 
lik^ Giles, Taylor and the worst Virginia ringsters, 
and lastly, the versatile Spaniard was hoping and 
praying to profit by the death of the patriot 
Wayne, as that would bring the old pensioner of 
Spain, General Wilkinson, in chief command. It 
is due to Wilkinson to relate that he repulsed these 
last overtures, liis inordinate ambition being satis- 



TERM OF JOHN ADAMS 89 

fied with the prospective command of the Amer- 
ican army, seemingly for life. Not so selfishly 
patriotic at this time was another self-condemned 
man, Senator William Blount of Tennessee, who 
was found gnilty of proffering aid to the British 
forces in Quebec while they were contem- 
plating a hostile movement upon Louisiana and 
New Orleans. Senator Blount was promptly ex- 
pelled from the Senate of the United States by a 
unanimous vote. In contrast with these men of 
little faith in their Country or countrymen was 
Captain Isaac Guion, a veteran of the Revolution, 
who commanded the reinforcements sent to the dis- 
turbed district and who determined to carr^T" the 
Spanish forts by assault if they were not evacu- 
ated on or before a certain date, which he fixed 
at xVpril 1, 1798. The garrisons of the two forts 
were lodged by the Spaniards for safety in Fort 
Panmure. The state of local feeling being at high 
tension, about midnight on March 29 the drums 
were heard of the troops marching to the river 
bank, and before daylight the last soldier of Spain 
had embarked for New Orleans. It was more like 
a precipitated retreat than a peaceful evacuation. 
The survey of the lines of demarkation at once 
proceeded under Colonel Ellicott, with his assist- 
ants and military escort. Winthrop Sargent be- 
came by appointment of John Adams the first ter- 
ritorial governor. Here ended, not the first, but 
perhaps the worst lesson in Spanish perfidy. Con- 
temporaneous with this falling back on land before 
an inferior force, Spanish privateers were seizing 



90 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

our unarmed merchant vessels, confiscating their 
cargoes and marching their officers and sailors in 
manacles through the public streets in Spanish 
towns to dungeons where died the victims of the 
dreadful Inquisition. The conduct of France was 
no better. In his message of December 8, Presi- 
dent Adams clearly states the situation: ''The 
decree of the directory, alleged to be intended to 
restrain the depredation of French cruisers on our 
commerce, has not given and cannot give any re- 
lief. It enjoins them to confonn to all the laws 
of France relative to cruising and prizes, while 
these laws are themselves the sources of the depre- 
dations of which we have so long, so justly, and 
so fruitlessly complained." The "cut-throat 
directoiy," drunk with blood and democracy, was 
now threatening war and destruction and was roll- 
ing up the four million depredation debt for which 
France gave the United States ample money and 
territorial indemnity in 1803. 

Kecurring to the history of Louisiana, we find 
that in January, 1798, Governor Gayoso issued to 
his lower officials some rather nonsensical instruc- 
tions, as for example: "Liberty of conscience is 
not to be extended beyond the first generation ; the 
children of the emigrants (sic) must be Catholic; 
in Upper Louisiana no settler is to be admitted who 
is not a fanner or a merchant; commandants are 
to watch that no preacher of any religion but the 
Catholic comes into the province ; no land is to be 
granted to a trader; if the grantee owes debts to 
the province, the products of the first four crops 



TERM OF JOHN ADAMS 91 

are to be applied to their discharge in preference 
to that of debts due abroad." 

The most distinguished visitors of this year 
were the Duke of Orleans and the Duke of Mon- 
tausier, the grandsons of the Duke of Orleans, 
who was regent of France under Louis XV. Upon 
the death of Governor Gayoso on July 18, 1799, 
Don Maria Vidal became acting civil governor. 
The Marquis de Casa-Calvo was sent over from 
Cuba to act as military governor. About this time 
uncommon agitation was excited in the States of 
Kentuclr^^, Tennessee and regions adjacent by 
notice being given that New Orleans could no 
longer be used as a place of deposit by up-river 
Americans because the three-year treaty limit had 
expired. A protracted correspondence was soon 
entered upon by Secretary of State Pickering with 
satisfactory results. The king overruled his sub- 
ordinates. The port of New Madrid was in 1799 
made a part of Upper Louisiana. 

Don Carlos Dehault De Lassus, now the com- 
mandant general of the last named province, re- 
ported the result of the census taken on the 31st 
of December to be : 

St. Louis, nine hundred and twenty-five; St. 
Genevieve, nine hundred and forty-nine; St. 
Charles, eight hundred and seventy-five; Caron- 
delet, one hundred and eighty- four; St. Fernando, 
two hundred and seventy-six; Marias des Liards, 
three hundred and seventy-six ; Maramec, one hun- 
dred and fifteen; St. Andrews, three hundred 
and ninety-three ; New Bourbon, five hundred and 



92 TEE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

sixty; Cape Girardeau, five hundred and twenty- 
one ; Xew ]\Iadrid, seven hundred and eighty-two ; 
Little Meadows, forty-nine. Total, six thousand 
and twenty-eight. There were in round figures five 
thousand whites, two hundred free colored and less 
than nine hundred slaves. The value of the deer 
skins, lead, etc., shipped to New Orleans in 1799, 
amounted to seventy-three thousand one hundred 
and seventy-six dollars. 

On October 1, 1800, the important treaty of San 
Ildefonso, conveying Louisiana to France, was 
concluded between the king of Spain and the First 
Consul of France, Napoleon Bonaparte. As this 
belongs to the class of secret treaties and did not 
take effect, so far as it related to Louisiana, until 
the following March, its consideration relates to 
the next administration. Although this was a 
treaty in which we had no hand or part, it un- 
doubtedly essentially modified the history of this 
Eepublic. Spanish procrastination and aggran- 
dizing power would have postponed our crossing 
the Mississippi until a much later date. 

It is a matter of general regret that the mate- 
rials for the histoiy of Upper Louisiana are so 
meager in extent. The well and favorably known 
John B. Henderson of Missouri has expressed the 
opinion that the Spanish archives and the official 
records of the chief officers at St. Louis would 
prove to be the best sources of historical infoinna- 
tion. But these formal documents it may be sug- 
gested would hardly be suitable or adequate for a 
popular narrative. There has been a failure some- 



TERM OF JOHN ADAMS 93 

where to collect and preserve the facts relating to 
the many interesting incidents and events that 
must have happened during the long Spanish occu- 
pation of so large a domain. 

During the commandantship of Zenon Trudeau, 
which ended in 1798, immigration was wisely en- 
couraged, fur trading was extended far into the 
interior and far up the Missouri, and St. Louis 
was made more attractive by newer and better 
houses and other structures. Commandant De 
Lassus, who followed Tmdeau, was a high-toned 
gentleman by birth and breeding, and favored 
whatever measures tended to promote the perma- 
nent welfare of the people and their province. 
Down to the end of John Adams's administration, 
]\Iarch 4, 1801, Upper Louisiana was exempt from 
all the disturbing agitations, the threatened inva- 
sions, the old and new world complications, which 
kept the lower province in a continuous ferment. 
And those whose lives partook of the serenity of 
the forest primeval, happily escaped the reason- 
and-reputation-destroying partisan strifes raging 
in the new Republic, whose extremes were meas- 
ured by the exclamations of Hamilton and Macon 
on the death of Washington: ''America has lost 
her Savior— I a father," and, ''I am glad he is 
dead ! We could not pull him down ! ' ' The alien 
and sedition laws ; the sedition-breeding Kentucky 
Resolutions of '98; the scandalous Mazzei letter 
and the peace negotiations with France are even 
now too hot and explosive to handle. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

LOUISIANA DURING THE YEARS 1801 
AND 1802. 

TRANSFEK FROM SPAIN TO FRANCE — LIVINGSTON, 
NAPOLEON, JEFFERSON, MADISON - 

A PLACE of, honor in our story must be 
found for a hero and a patriot, Andrew 
Jackson, who has had much to do with the 
growth and glory of Tennessee and who 
won the grandest victory over the veterans of 
Wellington, at New Orleans, ever gained in any 
part of ancient Louisiana's wide dominion. Pale, 
sallow and shaking like an aspen leaf with the 
chills incident to a malarial fever. General Jack- 
son's prodigious exertions and activity during the 
anxious weeks preceding the memorable battle, can 
be likened to nothing but Robert R. Livingston's 
sleepless toils and efforts to gain for his country 
tJie identical territoiy the heroic invalid was then 
struggling with the defensive might of a Hector 
to protect. Jackson had been promoted from the 
National House of Representatives to the United 
States Senate, for his complete success in getting 
the brave Tennessee volunteers paid for their 
perilous sen-ices against the Indians. In a letter 
from Philadelphia, written in 1798 when about 
resigning his Senatorship to accept a State judge- 

94 



LOUISIANA IN 1801-1802 95 

ship, this interesting sidelight is thrown upon a 
world-renowned character: ''France has finally 
concluded a treaty with the emperor and the king 
of Sardinia, and is now turning her force toward 
Great Britain. Bonaparte, with one hundred and 
fifty thousand troops (used to conquer), is ordered 
on the coast, and called the army of England. Do 
not then be surprised if my next letter should an- 
nounce a revolution in England. Should Bona- 
parte make a lauding on the, English shore, 
tyranny will be humbled, a throne crushed and a 
republic will spring from the wreck and millions 
of distressed people restored to the rights of man 
by the conquering arm of Bonaparte. ' ' 

Thomas Jefferson having been chosen chief 
magistrate by the House of Representatives on 
February 17, 1801, through the potent influence, 
unselfishly employed, of his chief political adver- 
sary, General Hamilton, was sworn into office by 
another political opponent, the great Chief Justice, 
John Marshall. Neither in the first inaugural of 
March 4, in the first annual message of December 
8, nor in any proclamations or special messages of 
the year 1801, does Mr. Jefferson allude to the 
Louisiana business. But in a semi-official letter of 
July 13, to William C. C. Claiborne, whom he had 
appointed governor of the Mississippi Territory, 
in preference to "Judge" Andrew Jackson, who 
was an applicant for the place, the President says : 
"With respect to Spain our dispositions are sin- 
cerely amiable and even affectionate. We consider 
her possessions of the adjacent countiy as most 



96 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

favorable to our interests, and should see with 
extreme pain any other nation substituted for 
them. In all communications therefore with their 
officers, conciliation and mutual accommodation 
are to be mainly attended to. Everything irritat- 
ing to be avoided, eveiything friendly to be done 
for them. The most fruitful source of misunder- 
standing will be the conduct of their and our peo- 
jDle at New Orleans. Temper and justice will be 
the best guides through these intricacies. Should 
France get possession of that country, it will be 
more to be lamented than remedied by us, as it 
will furnish ground for profound consideration on 
our part, how best to conduct ourselves in that 
case. It would of course be tlie subject of fresh 
communications to you." As Spain closed against 
us the navigation of the IMississippi the next year, 
this was clearly a case of misplaced affection. 
And as for France, the sequel shows that the 
executive was diametrically wrong in the line of 
his lamentations. In nominating Chancellor 
Robert R. Livingston, *'an able and honorable 
man," to quote the words of the President, as 
minister plenipotentiary to France, Jefferson 
made probably the best appointment of his entire 
administration. He was, except for his serious 
deafness, an ideal diplomatic agent. Washington 
selected him for the same post in 179-i, but was 
obliged to fall back on James Monroe, his third 
choice. Monroe consorted with the more or less 
crime-stained successors of Danton, ]Marat, Robes- 
pierre, and other "citizen assassins," so cordially, 



LOUISIANA IN 1801-1802 97 

that he had to be recalled for disobeying his in- 
structions. 

The references of Secretary of State, Madison, 
to our relations with Spain, England and France, 
were also in clear conflict with the current of actual 
subsequent events. On JuDe 15, 1801, Madison 
writes to Rufus King, our minister to England: 
''I cannot but briefly add, however, that we have 
the mortification to find that, notwithstanding all 
the forbearances and endeavors of the United States 
for the establishment of just and friendly relations 
with Great Britain, accounts continue to arrive 
from different quarters of accumulating trespasses 
on our commerce and neutral rights. ' ' It is some- 
what singular that just ten months later the admin- 
istration was favoring, as will appear, an offensive 
and aggressive alliance with these same British 
trespassers on our commerce, in a war of expul- 
sion against France. On June 9 Madison wrote 
to Charles Pinckney, the new minister to Spain: 
''The spoliations committed on our trade, for 
which Spain is held responsible, are known to be 
already of veiy great amount, and it is said to 
be apprehended that they may not have yet ceased. 
* * * Hitherto redress has been sought, some- 
times in tribunals of justice, sometimes by applica- 
tions to the government, and sometimes to both 
these modes. Experience has sufficiently shown 
that neither the one nor the other, nor both, can 
be relied on for obtaining full justice for our in- 
jured citizens. Some other effort, therefore, is due 
to the sufferers, and, let me add, to tlie dignity of 



98 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

the United States, which must always feel the in- 
sults offered to the rights of individual citizens." 
But on July 13, thirty-four days later, the Presi- 
dent strangely forgets about what is due ''the suf- 
ferers" and "the dignity of the United States" 
while assuring Governor Claiborne of his "affec- 
tionate disposition toward Spain." Truly a sad 
case of unrequited affections. During the whole of 
the year 1801 and until March, 1802, the govern- 
ment at Washington remained wholly ignorant of 
the terms of the treaty of San Ildefonso, signed 
October 1, 1800, by the Prince of Peace and Mar- - 
shal Berthier, minister of France at Madrid. This 
significant treaty transferred to France all that 
vast and vaguely defined territory known as 
Louisiana which France had turned over to Spain 
in 1762. Bonaparte's initial policy and earliest 
ambition was to restore to France all her lost 
former possessions. But it is the privilege of 
great men to be inconsistent and also unsuccessful. 
It is a matter of indisputable historic fact that he 
restored nothing that remained restored and never 
added a foot of territory'' permanently to France; 
on the contrary he lost Belgium and the left bank 
of the Rhine. The Duke of Parma and the infanta 
of the queen and Charles IV of Spain must be pro- 
vided for. To give consequence and dignity to 
the daughter of royalty' and to honor one of 
Spain's illustrious families, a great jiartly devel- 
oped empire was offered by Spain to France for 
the uncertain sovereignly of the ix^tty kingdom of 
Tuscany. Its priceless art treasures and historic 



LOUISIANA IN 1801-1802 99 

memories probably did not weigh much on either 
side of the scale. The earlier secret treaty took 
effect March 21, 1801. Napoleon prepared to dis- 
patch Marshal Victor, with five battalions of in- 
fantry and the required complement of cavalry 
and artillery, but the dashing Victor and his forces 
with three brigadier generals never sailed to New 
Orleans. 'x;' 

Not until April 18, 1802, does President Jeffer- 
son wake up to the large significance of the Louis- 
iana question. In a letter of that date to Robert 
• R. Livingston, our envoy extraordinary to France, 
he gives strong expression to some elastic views, 
but elastic unfortunately in the wrong direction: 
''The cession of Louisiana and the Floridas by 
Spain to France works most sorely on the United 
States. * * * The day that France takes pos- 
session of New Orleans fixes the sentence which is 
to restrain her forever within her low watermark. 
It seals the union of two nations who in conjunc- 
tion can maintain exclusive possession of the 
ocean. From that moment we must marry our- 
selves to the British fleet and nation. We must 
turn all our attentions to a maritime force, for 
which our resources place us on very high 
grounds; and having formed and cemented to- 
gether a power which may render reinforcement 
of her settlements here impossible to France, make 
the first cannon which shall be fired in Europe the 
signal for tearing up any settlement she may have 
made, and for holding the two continents of 



WtfC 



100 TEE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

America in sequestration for the common purposes 
of the United British and American nations." 

Here is expansion with an awful vengeance ! It 
embraces, North, South, Central America and all 
the oceans ! By October 10 in a letter to Mr. Liv- 
ingston, Mr. Jefferson distinctly becomes an 
ardent friend of peace with France : ' ' We see all 
the disadvantageous consequences of taking a side, 
and shall be forced into it only by a more disagree- 
able alternative; in which event, we must conter- 
vail the disadvantages by measures which will 
give us splendor and power, but not as much hap- 
piness as our present system. We wish, therefore, 
to remain well with France. But we see that no 
consequences, however ruinous to them, can secure 
us with certainty against the extravagance of her 
present rulers. I think, therefore, that while we 
do nothing which the first nation on earth would 
deem crouching, we had better give to all our com- 
munications with them a very mild, complaisant, 
and even friendly complexion but always inde- 
pendent." 

By November 29, the President's mood changes 
again somewhat, as shown in a letter to Thomas 
Cooper: ''It delights me to find that there are 
persons who still think that all is not lost in 
France. That their restoration from a limited to 
an unlimited despotism is but to give themselves 
a new impulse. But I see not how or when. The 
press, the only tocsin of a nation, is completely 
silenced there, and all means of general effort 
taken away." This rough drive at Napoleon 



LOUISIANA IN 1801-1802 101 

Bonaparte is the brilliant farewell stroke of policy 
for tlie year before the great treaty. 

In January, 1802, the alert Livingston learns 
positively of the secret treaty between France and 
Spain and forwards a copy of the Spanish treaty 
to his government. On February 26, he writes 
from Paris : ' ' On the subject of Louisiana, I have 
nothing new. The establishment is disapproved 
by every statesman here as one that will occasion 
a great waste of men and money, excite enmities 
with us, and produce no possible advantage to the 
Nation. But it is a scheme to which the First Con- 
sul is extremely attached, and must of course be 
supported. You will find, by the enclosed note, 
that I have pressed an explanation on the subject, 
but I have received no answer. I have it, however, 
through a friend, from the First Consul, that it is 
by no means their intention to obstruct the naviga- 
tion of the Mississippi or violate our treaty with 
Spain." 

The Secretary of State, in a letter to Livingston 
of May 1, 1802, begins to realize the large import 
of Louisiana : ' ' The conduct of the French gov- 
ernment, in paying so little attention to its obliga.- 
tions under the treaty, in neglecting its debts to 
our citizens, in giving no answers to your com- 
plaints and expostulations, which you say is the 
case with those of other foreign ministers also, and 
particularly in its reserve as to Louisiana, which 
tacitly contradicts the language first hold to you 
by the Minister of Foreign Relations, gives tokens 
as little auspicious to the true interests of France 



102 THE LOUIiSIANA PURCHASE 

herself, as to the rights and just objects of the 
United States. * * * The cession of Louis- 
iana to France becomes daily more and more a 
source of i^ainful apprehension. * * * Yqu 
will also pursue, by prudent means, the inquiry 
into the extent of the cession, particularly whether 
it includes the Floridas as well as New Orleans, 
and endeavor to ascertain the price at which these, 
if included in the cession, would be yielded to the 
United States." 

It must be observed here that Madison turns 
his mind only to the comparatively unimportant 
east side of the river, not the unbounded west side. 
In a dispatch of May 11, to Pinckney, he shows 
clearly Jefferson's attitude: "Should the cession 
actually fail from this, or any other cause, and 
Spain retain New Orleans and the Floridas, I re- 
peat to you the wish of the President, that every 
eifort and address be employed to obtain the 
arrangement by which the territory on the east 
side of the Mississippi, including New Orleans, 
may be ceded to the United States, and the Mis- 
sissippi made a common boundary, with a common 
use of its navigation for them and Spain. The 
inducements to be held out to Spain were inti- 
mated in your original instructions on this point. 
I am charged by the President now to add, that 
you may not only receive and transmit a proposi- 
tion of guaranty of her territory beyond the Mis- 
sissippi, as a condition of her ceding to the United 
States the territory, including New Orleans, on 
this side, but, in case it be necessary, may make 



LOUISIANA IN 1801-1802 103 

the proposition yourself, in the forms required by 
our Constitution.'' 

This very significant dispatch is found on page 
517 of American State Papers, Volume II, of 
Foreign Relations ; also in the archives of the De- 
partment of State. It is an official document 
which the writers of our school histories and the 
authors of the Hosmer-Binger works of fiction 
appear never to have seen. It proves that Mr. 
Jefferson, instead of bringing about the Louisiana 
acquisition single-handed, was one of the two men 
who were ready and willing to prevent forever this 
acquisition by a constitutional ' ' guaranty ' ' or pro- 
hibition ! "We refer of course to the vast territory 
on the west side of the Mississippi, which is the 
only domain worthy of serious discussion. 

Minister Pinckney tried in vain to carry out 
these ominous instructions, but fortunately could 
not, because Spain was hesitating and in doubt 
whether she had any Floridas to sell or convey. 
In France, Livingston was blandly told that the 
Floridas did not belong to the lands transferred. 
With all his virtuous patience exhausted Living- 
ston writes home in September: ''There never 
was a government in which less could be done by 
negotiation than here. There is no people, no leg- 
islature, no counsellors. One man is eveiything. 
He never asks advice, and never hears it unasked. 
His ministers are mere clerks ; and his legislature 
and counsellors parade officers." On October 26, 
1802, Livingston writes an important dispatch to 
the President, infonning him that the Mississippi 



104 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

business, though the officers are appointed, and the 
army under orders, has met with a check. He 
gives interesting details of a conversation he had 
two days before with Joseph Bonaparte, who as- 
sured him he had read a long memoir on Louisiana 
placed in his hands by our minister, and that his 
brother, the First Consul, had done likewise: 
''Joseph Bonaparte asked me whether we should 
prefer the Floridas to Louisiana! I told him that 
there was no comparison in their value, but that 
we had no wish to extend our boundarA" across the 
Mississippi or give color to the doubts that had 
been entertained of the moderation of our views; 
that all we sought was security, and not extension 
of territory." 

December 23, Secretary Madison sends to Paris 
this last dispatch of the year 1802 : ''In the latter 
end of last month we received information from 
New Orleans of the interdiction of the deposits 
there for our merchandise, stipulated by the treaty 
with Spain, without an equivalent establishment 
being assigned. * * * Should it be revoked 
before the time for the descent of the boats in the 
spring, both the injury and irritation proceeding 
from it will be greatly increased." The Secretary 
concludes : ' ' That, whilst we have no clear founda- 
tion on which to impute this infraction, to orders 
from the Spanish government, it would be con- 
trary to the duty, policy and character of our own 
to resort for redress in the first instance to the use 
of force." On the same date, Livingston, stirred 
to a state of tension over the pregnant events com- 



LOUISIANA IN 1801-1802 105 

ing on and making a last appeal to ward off ca- 
lamitj' to liis Countrj^, hurriedly writ<3s home: 
''The armament has not yet sailed; Florida not 
ceded; more hesitation and doubt on the subject 
than I have yet heard. A private memoir under 
the Consul's eye, touching a string that has 
alarmed them. I cannot now explain. The min- 
ister knows nothing of this. Set on foot a negotia- 
tion fixing our bounds with Britain, but by no 
means conclude until you hear from me that all 
hope here is lost. * * * Do not absolutely de- 
spair, though you may have no great reason to 
hope should New Orleans be possessed by a small 
force. ' ' 

It makes one's blood tingle to see this one sa- 
gacious American patriot contending single- 
handed for the right, against Talleyrand, Berthier, 
Marbois, and the Hero of Marengo with a nation in 
arms behind him ! Can it be that the learned jur- 
ist, the trained diplomatist, the veteran statesman, 
is more than a match for the young and yet inex- 
perienced first consul? So it would seem. The 
Franklins, the Livingstons and the Websters, in 
their own field of diplomacy, were never out-gen- 
eraled or out-fought. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE GREAT TREATY OF APRH 30, 1803. 

THE CORRESPONDENCE PRECEDING IT — WHO MADE IT. 

TO a right understanding of the Louisiana 
Purchase treaty of 1803, the letters that 
passed to our ministers in France and 
Spain are of vital impoi-tance. On Jan- 
uary 10, 1803, the Secretary of State wrote to 
Charles Pinckney: ''You will find also that the 
House has passed a resolution exj^licitly declaring 
that the stipulated rights of the United States on 
the Mississippi will be inviolably maintained. The 
disposition of many members was to give to the 
resolution a tone and complexion still stronger. 
To these proofs of the sensation which has been 
produced, it is to be added, that representations ex- 
pressing the peculiar sensibility of the Western 
country are on the way from everj^ quarter of it 
to the govermnent. There is, in fact, but one senti- 
ment throughout the Union with respect to the 
dut\' of maintaining our rights of navigation and 
boundary. The onlj^ existing difference relates to 
the degree of patience which ought to l^e exercised 
during the appeal to friendly modes of redress." 
Eight days later Madison wi'ote to Livingston: 
* * IVIr. Monroe will be the bearer of the instructions 
under which you are jointly to negotiate. The ob- 

106 



TREATY OF APRIL 30, 1803 107 

ject of them will be to j^rocure a cession of New 
Orleans and the Floridas to the United States and 
consequently the establishment of the Mississippi 
as the boundary between the United States and 
Louisiana." 

Livingston, anticipating these instructions, or 
rather acting upon those of like tenor sent him 
before, addressed the French Minister of Foreign 
Relations on January 10: ''The land (to be) 
ceded, if we except a narrow strip on the bank of 
the river, will, for the most part, consist of barren 
sands and sunken marshes, while that retained by 
France on the west side of the Mississippi includes 
the greatest bulk of the settlements and a rich fer- 
tile country." 

On March 2, Madison, anticipating Monroe *s ar- 
rival in Paris, instructed him: ''Your mission to 
Madrid will depend on the event of that to Paris, 
and on the information there to be acquired. 
Should the entire cession in view (the Floridas) 
be obtained from the French republic, as assignees 
of Spain, it will not be necessary to resort to the 
Spanish government. Should the whole or any 
part of the cession be found to depend not on the 
French, but on the Spanish government, you will 
proceed to join Mr. Pinckney in the requisite ne- 
gotiations with the latter. Although the United 
States are deeply interested in the complete suc- 
cess of your mission, the Floridas, or even either of 
them, without the Island of New Orleans, on pro- 
portionate terms, will be a valuable acquisition." 
Sad to say, the Secretary of State here deplorably 



108 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

weakened to the limit of being content with the 
*' barren sands and sunken marshes" of one of the 
Floridas. Livingston writes to Madison on March 
3, on being notified of Monroe's appointment: "I 
shall do everything in my power to pave the way 
for him, and sincerely wish his mission may be at- 
tended with the desired effect. It will, however, 
cut off one resource on which I greatly relied, be- 
cause I had established a confidence which it will 
take Mr, Monroe some time to inspire. Enclosed 
is a letter addressed to the First Consul himself, 
and sent him before I heard of Mr, Monroe's ap- 
pointment. ' ' The letter or paper to which Living- 
ston refers was a cogent and ardent appeal to Bona- 
pai-te for justice; for the payment of just debts, 
for the right to buy Florida or some places of 
transhipment. He closed with -a feeling appeal to a 
soldier 's humanity : ' ' The savages on the east side 
of the Mississippi are numerous and brave; con- 
siderable sums of money are annually expended by 
Spain in purchasing their friendship. Should 
their supplies be withheld, through neglect or mis- 
application, a universal massacre of all the plant- 
ers will ensue. Their detached situation renders it 
impossible to protect them." 

In his general instructions to Livingston and 
Monroe, dated March 2, Secretary Madison lays 
down their essential feature in article 1 : '* France 
cedes to the United States forever the territory east 
of the Mississippi, comprehending the two Flor- 
idas, the Island of New Orleans and the islands 
lying on the north and east of that channel of said 



TREATY OF APRIL 30, 1803 109 

river, which is commonly called the South Pass, to- 
gether with such other islands as appertain to 
either West or East Florida ; France resei^ving her- 
self all her territory on the west side of the Missis- 
sippi." It will be observed here that while the 
Jefferson government holds on to New Orleans and 
grasps the * ' sand banks and sunken marshes ' ' with 
a firmer hand, it lays no claim to, but in fact en- 
tirely abandons to France the whole of the west 
side of the Mississippi. This prepares us to accept 
as veritable the remarkable instructions of April 
18, 1803, which Secretary Madison affirms, "the 
President thinks proper should now be given." 

After directing Livingston and Monroe to sound 
the dispositions of the British government and in- 
vite its concurrence in war, the official dispatch 
proceeds: ''Notwithstanding the just repugnance 
of this countiy to a coalition of any sort with the 
belligerent policies of Europe, the advantages to 
be desired from the co-operation of Great Britain 
in a war of the United States, at this period, against 
France and her allies, are too obvious and too im- 
portant to be renounced. And notwithstanding 
the apparent disinclination of the British councils 
to a renewal of hostilities with France, it will prob- 
ably yield to the various motives which will be 
felt, to have the United States in the scale of Brit- 
ain against France, and particularly for the im- 
mediate purjDose of defeating a project of the 
latter, which has evidently created much solicitude 
in the British government." 

On the same date a second letter is sent to our 



110 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

minister in Paris, by direction of Mr. Jefferson, 
breathing war against France: "Among these 
arrangements, the President conceives that a com- 
mon interest may recommend a candid understand- 
ing, and a closer connection with Great Britain, 
and he presumes that the occasion may present 
itself to the British government in the same light. 
He accordingly authorizes you, or either of you, in 
case the prospect of your discussion with the 
French government should make it expedient, to 
oi)en a confidential communication with ministers 
of the British govermnent and to confer freely and 
fully on the precautions and provisions best 
adapted to the crisis, and in which that government 
may be disposed to concur, ' ' and so forth. 

The date, April 18, 1803, must be boiiie in mind, 
because it will scon appear that these extraordinaiy 
instructions were given after the Purchase treaty 
had been virtually made ! 

Still continuing out of touch with current events, 
on the veiy day of the signing of the Great treaty, 
Jefferson blindly writes to John Bacon, from 
Washington: "Although I am not sanguine in 
obtaining a cession of New Orleans for money, yet 
I am confident in the policy of putting off the day 
of contention for it, till we are stronger in our- 
selves, and stronger in allies, but especially till we 
have planted such a population on the Mississippi 
as will be able to do their own business, without 
the necessity of marching men from the shares of 
the Atlantic, fifteen hundred or two thousand miles 



TREATY OF APRIL 30, 1803 111 

tliitlier, to perish by fatigue and change of cli- 
mate. ' ' 

Returning now to what was happening in France 
and to Livingston's extraordinary e:xertions and 
activities, we find in that minister's memorable 
midnight dispatch, dated Paris, April 13, 1803, and 
finished at 3 o 'clock in the morning, the authentic 
official history of the Louisiana Purchase treaty. 
This long, clear and comprehensive statement tells 
the whole historic story. The Great treaty was, in 
its essential elements, the work of three days. On 
April 11, Talleyrand asked Livingston "whether 
he wished to have the whole of Louisiana!" On 
April 12 Monroe arrived; Livingston again saw 
Talleyrand, who tried to bluff him. On April 13 
two conferences took place between Marbois and 
Livingston, lasting several hours and ending at 
midnight, in which botli negotiators agreed upon 
a treaty of transfer and acquisition, leaving open 
the amount to be paid. Upon this point they did 
not differ widely. Monroe was not presented to 
the First Consul until May 1, and hence, as a ne- 
gotiator, had nothing officially to do with a treaty 
virtually negotiated April 13 and finally concluded 
April 30. 

The Livingston dispatches of April 13 and April 
27 cover the essential steps in the progress of the 
famous negotiation. To quote all that is interest- 
ing is impossible. To condense is our only re- 
course. From these letters we learn that the de- 
cision to sell Louisiana was reached on Sunday, 
April, 10, after Napoleon had had a prolonged con- 



112 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

ference with Talleyrand, Marbois and others. The 
idea of selling originated in the active brain of 
Bonaparte. It was opposed by his brothers and by 
Talleyrand, Berthier and other chief men. The 
subject was broached by Talleyrand on Monday, 
introduced again by our minister on Tuesday, who 
found Talleyrand evasive and mendacious, and 
was twice returned to by Marbois on Wednesday. 
On this day, April 13, the serious business began. 
Marbois sought Livingston while the latter was at 
dinner ; returned after dinner ; gave an opening for 
a free talk, which our minister improved by be- 
ginning with the debts due and commenting on the 
extraordinaiy conversation and conduct of Talley- 
rand, the foreign minister. Marbois said that this 
led to * ' something important that had been cursor- 
ily mentioned to him at St. Cloud, but, as my house 
was full of company, he thought I had better call 
upon him any time before 11 that night." Liv- 
ingston was now too much alive to the prodigious 
import of the matter in hand to wait until 11 at 
night. So, soon as Monroe took leave he hastened 
to the house of Marbois. After discussing the 
equivocations of Talleyrand and the Consul's blunt 
proposal for us to hand over a hundred million 
francs, pay our own claims and take the whole 
country, Livingston, after a polite and politic dis- 
avowal of any anxiety to seek a larger expansion 
of territory, cautiously remarked, '*We would be 
ready to purchase, provided the sum was reduced 
to reasonable limits." Marbois said if we would 
name sixtv millions and take upon us the Amer- 



TBEATY OF APRIL 30, 1803 113 

ican claims, to the amount of twenty more, he 
would try how far this would be accepted. Our 
minister declared that sum was greatly beyond our 
means and wished Bonaparte reminded that the 
whole region was liable to become the property of 
England. The Minister of the Public Treasury 
admitted the weight of all this. But, said he, ' ' You 
know the temper of a youthful conqueror, every- 
thing he does is rapid as lightning, we have only to 
speak to him as an opportunity presents itself, per- 
haps in a crowd, when he bears no contradiction. 
* * * Try then if you cannot come up to my 
mark. Consider the extent of the country, the ex- 
clusive navigation of the river, and the importance 
of having no neighbors to disrupt you, no war to 
dread. ' ' Our minister asked him in case of a pur- 
chase whether they would stipulate that France 
would never possess the Floridas and that she 
would aid us to procure them. He replied in the 
afnrmative. ''The field 023ened to us is infinitely 
larger than our instructions contemplated," says 
Livingston, but he promises to consult Monroe. In 
the dispatch of April 17, he repeats ' ' that the com- 
mission contains power only to treat for lands on 
the east side of the Mississippi." "You will rec- 
ollect, ' ' writes Livingston to Madison, ' ' that I have 
been absolutely without powers to the present mo- 
ment, and that though I have hazarded many 
things upon a presumption that I should have 
them, none have been received till now and now 
they are unfortunately too limited." 

On the 15th of April, after conferring with Mon- 



lU THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

roe, Livingston offered Marbois fifty million 
francs, plus the debts, for the whole of Louisiana. 
This ai:)proached within two million dollars of the 
price asked. Bonaparte received this offer "cold- 
ly,'' from policy, of course. Monroe's reception 
was delayed, about which Livingston writes: 
"Mr, Monroe having been compelled, where here 
(1794) to be well with the party then uppermost, 
and who are now detested by the present ruler, it 
will be some time before they know how to esti- 
mate his worth, and Talleyrand has, I find, im- 
bibed personal prejudice against him, that will in- 
duce him to throw every possible obstruction in 
his way that he can consistently with their own 
views." Napoleon went off to Flanders and left 
negotiations at a standstill until our ministers 
wisely agreed to Bonaparte 's own favorable tenns. 
The first announcement of the grand consummation 
was sent to Rufus King, in London, in these words : 
"We have the honor to infonn you that a treaty 
(the 30th April), has been signed between the Min- 
ister Plenipotentiary of the French government, 
and ourselves, by which the United States have ob- 
tained the full right to and sovereignty in and 
over New Orleans, and the whole of Louisiana, as 
Spain possessed the same." 

On tiie 12th of May, Livingston foi-wards to 
Washington by "a special and safe messenger"— 
Mr. Hughes— the Great treaty, accompanied by 
other papers and two lengthy dispatches, the sec- 
ond of which is signed, like the treaty, by both 
American ministers. We can extract but spar- 



TREATY OF APRIL 30, 1803 115 

ingly and only from what is of general interest. 
Livingston writes to Madison : ' ' Among the most 
favorite projects of the First Consul, was the col- 
onization of Louisiana. He saw in it a new Egypt ; 
he saw in it a colony that was to counterbalance the 
eastern establishment of Britain; he saw in it a 
provision for his generals, and what was more im- 
portant on the then state of things, he saw in it a 
pretense for the ostracism of suspected enemies. 
To render the acquisition still more agreeable to 
the people, exaggerated accounts of its fertility, 
etc., were sold in every print shop." 

The herculean labors and ceaseless toils of Liv- 
ingston to force and keep the dark and ominous 
side of the Louisiana picture before the unsuspect- 
ing eyes of Bonaparte, can never in their all-em- 
bracing comprehensiveness be set forth. He per- 
sonally saw and deluged with written arguments, 
which he called memoirs, every person with any 
influence from Napoleon down; his vigilance was 
almost literally sleepless until the acute stage and 
critical crisis were unalterably passed; and as a 
proof of his far-seeing statesma,nship, he even then 
clearly saw that ''next to the negotiation that se- 
cured our independence, this is the most important 
the United States has ever entered into. "In the 
great peace treaty of 1782-83, he was second only 
to Franklin in the value and extent of his services. 
When this illustrious man next appears on the 
broad world scene, he frames a treat}^ that doubles 
the area of his Country, without one line of relevant 
instructions from this side of the Atlantic. The 



116 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

President and Secretaiy of State never for a mo- 
ment extended their vision beyond the Mississippi 
to its boundless west side. Xot a dollar of the 
two millions they asked from Congress was to be 
expended on the side of the gTeat Northwest which 
grew to be the best end of the Eepublic. The ad- 
ministration knew not what was going on in Eu- 
rope. Livingston divined eveiything that was go- 
ing on and made things move on in his own chosen 
way. The soldier whose fame subsequently filled 
the world, was now but tliirty-f our ; was without 
experience in statesmanship or diplomacy and 
handicapped by events, could hardly be expected 
to cope with a veteran in both these fields, now in 
the ripe maturity of his powers, with the honors 
and laurels of former triumphs giving power to his 
brain and dignity to his brow. In the battle of, the 
Mississippi the conqueror of Italy met with his 
first defeat. 



CHAPTER X. 

ECHOES OF THE GREAT TREATY. 

BONAPAKTe's motives for selling LOUISIANA— his 
PKOPHECIES — HOW ACQUISITION WAS RECEIVED. 

THE three most significant dates historically 
connected with the acquisition of the mag- 
nificent domain known as Louisiana, are 
April 30, 1803, when the Great treaty was 
signed ; October 19, when the treaty was ratified in 
the Senate of the United States by a vote of twen- 
ty-four to seven, and December 20, 1803, when our 
government received formal possession at New 
Orleans, from the French prefect, Laussat. Were 
we to add an interesting fourth date, it would be 
April 10 of the same treaty year— that blessed 
Easter day— when Napoleon, having returned from 
his Easter devotions, to the still standing Palace 
of St. Cloud, announced his sudden resolution to 
sell the whole of his possessions in America to the 
Americans. 

Much has been written about the motives of Bon- 
aparte in parting with his newly-acquired and still 
unexplored territory on this side of the Atlantic. 
It can only be asserted with reasonable safety that 
he doubtless acted from mixed motives, which were 
as various as his moods. When not inscrutable, the 
mainspring of his actions seemed to be military 

117 



118 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

gloiy and jDersonal aggrandizement. He was prob- 
ably impelled to adopt what proved to be a fool- 
ishly unwise policy, for these reasons: 

1. He feared that in the event of war, which was 
imminent, he would lose the colony of Louisiana 
within sixty days after he took possession. The 
Treaty of Amiens was at an end; Austria was 
threatening; a British fleet was in the West Indies 
and a sensational report had come from London 
that fifty thousand men were being raised for 
service in Louisiana. 

2. His affairs on the Island of San Domingo 
were in 1803 the worst possible; Toussaint I'Ouver- 
ture had worsted three of his best marshals; Le 
Clerc had just died, to whom he was attached, next 
to Duroc, Lannes and Berthier; and Livingston 
was shrewd enough to hold this bloody specter 
ever before his eyes ; another San Domingo on his 
hands he did not want. 

3. The First Consul, impressed by our min- 
ister's social rank in his own countiy, no less than 
by his merciless logic and solid understanding, had 
given his promise that debts due for the spoliation 
of our commerce, should be paid. This promise, 
of which he was again and again reminded, could 
only be kept by realizing on sale of public lands. 
He had then no funds. 

4. About this time the hero of Italy caught a 
vague glimpse of larger game. He projected the 
wild scheme of cariying the war, not into Africa, 
like Scipio x\fricanus, but into Briton, like Caesar. 
The scheme did not mature, partly because the 



THE GREAT TREATY 119 

young chieftain was not the peer of the "mighty 
Julius," whom Shakespeare calls 'Hhe foremost 
man of all this world." And then, the heroes of 
the Nile and the future victors of Trafalgar were 
lying in wait in the channel, and had the French 
levies ever gotten into England, the retreat from 
London would possibly have paralleled the retreat 
from Moscow, the most disastrous in all history-. 

5. Livingston's powers as a logician and sub- 
lime persistence were influencing factors in this 
momentous contention. Talleyrand said "he was 
the most importunate negotiator he had yet met 
with." 

And lastly the French Consul cherished a desire 
to build this Nation up at the expense of Great 
Britain. He had rather the American Union 
would grow strong and great than should his most 
dangerous rival. 

A few genuine Napoleonic utterances must suf- 
fice to support the preceding propositions. The 
most remarkable of these is found on page 65 of 
Histoire Generale des Traites de Paix by Le Comte 
de Garden: "Objection may be made that the 
Americans will prove to be too powerful for 
Europe in two or three centuries ; but my plans do 
not take into account these remote contingencies. 
They (the Americans) vdW have to give attention 
in the future to conflicts among the States of 
the Union. Confederations which call themselves 
perpetual last only so long as the contracting par- 
ties find it to their interest not to break them and 
it is to other present dangers to which we are ex- 



120 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

posed from the colossal power of England that I 
propose to applj^ a remedy. ' ' This is both authen- 
tic and prophetic. 

A translation from a passage on the same page 
shows that we paid for the Louisiana region some- 
thing more than Bonaparte would have taken: 
" If I should regulate my terms by what these vast 
territories are worth to the United States, the in- 
demnity would have no limit. I will be moderate 
for the reason that I am obliged to sell. But, keep 
this to yourself (to Marbois) I want fiftj" millions, 
and for less than that I will not treat; I would 
rather make a desperate effort to hold those fine 
regions." On page 75 of same authoritative source, 
we find this characteristic utterance by Napoleon: 
"When told by Barbe-Marbois that there was some 
uncertainty and obscurity in one article of the 
treaty, he replied that ' ' if obscurity was not there, 
it would perhaps be good policy to put it there." 
These and numerous other quotations have been 
transferred bodily, without credit, to what is known 
as Marbois 's History of Louisiana, which was 
probably written by William Beach Lawrence in 
the apparent interest of James Monroe and other 
political friends. The kindly Marbois at the feeble 
age of eightj^-three, doubtless lent the use of his 
name to the inaccurate book which first appeared 
in Paris in 1828. The Histoiy of Peace Treaties, 
of which Garden's great work is a continuation, 
was first published prior to this date. 

Returning to the highest sources of historical in- 
formation on tliis side of the ocean— the archives 



THE GREAT TREATY 121 

of the Government and the American state papers 
—it may be affirmed that the writers of Louisiana 
treaty history have apparently shunned these first 
sources of historic facts as if they were poisoned 
springs. 

As proof of the strange fatuity of the chief of- 
ficers of the administration, the Secretary of State 
writes from Washington to James Monroe, on 
April 20, 1803 : ' ' Certain it is that the hearts and 
hopes of the Western people are strongly fixed 
on the Mississippi for the future boundary. * * * 
It is even a doubt with some of the best judges 
whether the deposit alone should not be waived for 
a while, rather than it should be the immediate 
ground for war and an alliance with England." 

This letter was written just ten days before the 
Great treaty was actually dated, and one week 
after it was virtually agreed upon. Wliat had al- 
ready become the central, transcontinental canal, 
or broad, free highway from mountain to sea, of 
the greater E.epublic, Madison would make its 
fixed, future boundary! 

On May 1 he addressed Monroe : ' ' We have just 
received the message of his Britannic majesty, 
which is represented as the signal of a certain 
rupture with Prance. ' ' He adds : ' ' Such an event 
seems scarce avoidable. ' ' A rupture with France, 
whose ruler has just given us for a song an empire 
larger than his own! Was there ever such blind 
man's buff diplomacy? 

In a dispatch of May 28, one month less two 
days after the Purchase treaty was signed and in 



122 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

effect ratified in Paris, Madison involves Jefferson 
in his own diplomacy-in-the-dark. He instinicts 
Livingston and Monroe: "The President thinks 
that it will be ineligible, under such circumstances, 
that any convention whatever on the subject should 
be entered into, that will not secure to the United 
States the jurisdiction of a reasonable district on 
some convenient part of the bank of the Missis- 
sippi." It is needless to say that '*a reasonable 
district" related to the lower Mississippi where 
we required a place of transshipment, not to those 
vast regions already acquired lying along the great 
western tributaries of the upper Mississippi. 

And thus the habitual vacillations of Jefferson 
and Madison led them to abandon every claim ex- 
cept, one landing place ! If this is statesmanship, 
what would be its absence ? 

Three copies of the Louisiana treaty were trans- 
mitted to the United States by three separate 
agencies, but Mr. Hughes arrived first, on July 14, 
and delivered the weighty document to the Presi- 
dent at Washington. That Jefferson and Madison 
were astonished is to put it with mildness. 

They were, in point of fact, dazed at the audacity 
of their agents, the immensity of the sum paid and 
the enormous magnitude of the whole transaction. 
After taking two weeks to recover their equilib- 
rium, the Secretary of State, instead of ovei*whelm- 
ing one of America's greatest benefactors with 
grateful thanks, finds fault with Livingston in a 
personal letter addressed to ^lonroe. The Presi- 
dent at first declares that he cannot approve of the 



THE GREAT TREATY 123 

treaty, because, if he does, lie will make waste pa- 
per of the constitution. 

He keeps repeating "waste paper of the con- 
stitution," but finding at length that everybody 
was in favor of the treaty, except a few Hartford 
convention Federalists who had passed his own 
Kentucky resolutions of '98* in diluted form and 
had ceased to be Nationalists, he reverses the teach- 
ings of a lifetime and reluctantly approves of the 
actions of his agents. Mr. Jefferson had long 
been teaching that the strict construction of the 
constitution permitted nothing to be done under it 
except what was expressly authorized. There was 
hence no authority in express terms for the Nation 
to grow in size, to enlarge its boundaries, to add 
new territories. Ohio had been admitted into the 
Union that very year with his approval, but this 
was carved out of an acquisition gained by another 
peaceful or peace treaty— with England— made be- 
fore the constitution became operative. The su- 
preme organic law, according to this literal ex- 
pounder, hindered growth, development, progress, 

* President Roosevelt, in his inspiring Life of Thomas H. 
Benton, page 85, last ed., gives his countrymen some bed-rock 
history when he says: 

"Jefferson was the father of nullification, and therefore of 
secession. He used the woi-d 'nullify' in the original draft 
which he supplied to the Kentucky legislature, and though 
that body struck it out of the resolutions which they passed 
in 1798, they inserted it in those of the following year. This 
was done mainly as an unscrupulous party move on Jefferson's 
part, and when his side came into power he became a firm 
upholder of the Union; and, being constitutionally unable to 
put a proper value on truthfulness, he even denied that his 
resolutions could be construed to favor nullification — though 
they could by no possibility be construed to mean anything 
else." 



124 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

expansion. Instead of frankly admitting that his 
constructional theories were fundamentally wrong, 
he proceeded to take the right action and then 
tried to get the constitution amended so as to 
authorize in terms the acquisition of this territory. 
But the President's nearest friends took so languid 
an interest in the amendment scheme that the 
whole matter of post facto sanction was at once 
and forever abandoned. 

However, as late as August 12, 1803, in a letter 
to John Breckinridge, the President continues to 
insist that ''The constitution has made no pro- 
vision for our incorporating foreign nations into 
our Union. ' ' But two urgent letters from the ever- 
watchful and indefatigable Livingston, brings 
about an almost instantaneous change of base. The 
minister writes that the First Consul is alreadj^ 
tired of his bargain, being free from war's alanus, 
and has instructed Marbois to take advantage of 
any loopholes or technicalities in the line of rati- 
fication or prompt payment, to get rid of an un- 
fortunate agreement. The great negotiator, almost 
trembling with apprehension, beseeches Jefferson 
by his love of Country^ and by all that is holy, to 
hasten ratification without the change of a word or 
a stipulation ; to literally and immediateh^ com])ly 
with the financial conditions of the great trans- 
action, so that Bonaparte shall have no possible 
excuse for evading his solemn pledges and obliga- 
tions. The timely appeal had its desired effect. 
The President wrote to the Secretary of State from 
Monticello, Aucrust 12: "T infer that the less we 



THE GREAT TREATY 125 

say about constitutional difficulties respecting 
Louisiana the better, and that what is necessary 
for surmounting them must be done sub-silentio. ' ' 
A special session of Congress was called to 
meet October 17, and at the end of two days, to 
the enduring credit of the United States Senate of 
the Eighth Congress, the magnificent acquisition 
was consummated and ratified. It is useless to re- 
hearse the exploded theories and sophistical rea- 
soning used in the Senate and still more in the 
House against this beneficent treaty. Hamilton, 
of course, and other patriots of his party sup- 
ported the treaty most zealously. Perhaps nothing 
weaker was said from the beginning to the ending 
of this enormous transaction than what Monroe 
said in a letter to Madison, written two weeks after 
the treaty was signed : ' ' Could we have procured 
a part of the territory we should never have 
thought of getting the whole, but the decision of the 
Consul was to sell the whole, and we could not 
obtain any change in his mind on the subject. ' ' 
Compared with such dullness, Jefferson's twin- 
nation theory might almost pass for wisdom: 
' ^ AYhether we remain one confederacy, or fomi into 
Atlantic or Mississippi confederacies, I believe is 
not very important to the happiness of either 
part." A final chapter contrasting conditions in 
the Louisiana Purchase States in 1803 and 1900, 
will afford, we trust, a pleasing conclusion to this 
historic story. 



CHAPTER XL 
LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES. 

CONDITIONS IN 1803 AND 1900 CONTRASTED. 

THE State of Louisiana, the first-born State 
of the Louisiana treaty, was admitted into 
the Union April 30, 1812. It was named by 
LaSalle after liOuis XIV, King of France. 
It contains an area of forty-eight thousand seven 
hundred and twenty square miles, being some- 
what larger than the Territory of Orleans, which 
was organized March 26, 1804. Louisiana, by the 
census of 1900, has a population of one million 
three hundred and eighty-one thousand six hundred 
and twenty-five. In 1803 the population was placed 
at fifty thousand; in 1800, at forty-two thousand 
three hundred and seventy-five. The City of New 
Orleans, with a population of two hundred and 
eighty-seven thousand one hundred and four in 
1900, had but eight thousand and fifty-six in 1803. 
The population of the State increased twenty-three 
and five-tenths per cent from 1890 to 1900, and 
thirty-six and seven-tenths per cent from 1850 to 
1860. The cotton product of 1900 was seven hun- 
dred and fourteen thousand and seventy-three com- 
mercial bales. In 1802 the revenues of the colony 
from all sources amounted to one hundred and 
twenty-one thousand and forty-one dollars. The 

126 



LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES 127 

expenses of the Spanish government, troops, In- 
dian presents, etc., reached four hundred thousand 
dollars in specie, at that time. The French had 
provided, before occupation, a captain general, with 
a salary of seventy thousand francs; a colonial 
prefect, at fifty thousand francs ; three brigadier 
generals, etc. The French prefect, Laussat, wrote 
home: ''I will now proceed to say how justice is 
administered here, which is worse than in Turkey." 
United States Consul Clark wrote to his govern- 
ment in 1803: ''AH the officers plunder when 
the opportunity offers; they are all venal." In 
view of these facts, Robert R. Livingston's words, 
after signing the Great treaty, seem more and 
more remarkable : ' ' We have lived long, but this 
is the noblest work of our whole lives. * * * 
The instruments which we have just signed will 
cause no tears to be shed; they prepare ages of 
happiness for innumerable generations of human 
creatures. The Mississippi and Missouri will see 
them succeed one another, and multiply, truly 
worthy of the regard and care of Providence, in 
the bosom of equality, under just laws, freed from 
the errors of superstition and the scourges of bad 
government. ' ' On November 30 the Spanish com- 
missioners, Casa Calvo and Salcedo, surrendered 
the whole of ancient Louisiana to the French com- 
missioner, Laussat. The region was in the nom- 
inal possession of France just twenty days. On 
December 20, 1803, it was surrendered by Laussat 
to Governor Claiborne and General Wilkinson, the 
American commissioners. That was the glorious 



128 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

date when the French flag came down and the Stars 
and Stripes went up, amid salvos of artillery from 
shore batteries and warships. The subsequent ter- 
ritorial experience was not so glorious. Claiborne, 
who became the first governor, knew neither the 
laws nor the language of the people he was sent to 
govern. His despotism was complete, because, be- 
ing the chief of state and court of last resort, he 
centered in his own person all executive and ju- 
dicial functions. Under the Act of Congress of 
March 26, 1804, one judge constituted a quorum, 
so that one man could still rob the citizen of prop- 
erty, honor or life, at will. Certain Spanish land 
titles were declared void. Laussat described Clai- 
borne as ''extremely beneath the position in which 
he has been placed," and Willdnson as ''a rattle- 
headed fellow, frequently drunk;" neither, know- 
ing ' ' a word of French nor Spanish. ' ' From these 
men to Edward Livingston, President Zachary 
Taylor and Judah P. Benjamin are long steps up- 
ward. 

MISSOUEI. 

The upper portion of old Louisiana was named 
the ''District of Louisiana" under the Act of 1804, 
but by the act which took effect July 4, 1805, was 
called the "Territory of Louisiana." This name 
was changed to Missouri when organized in 1812. 
On August 10, 1821, it was admitted into the Union 
as a State, with an area of sixty-nine thousand four 
hundred and fifteen square miles. The territory 
had a population of twenty thousand eight hundred 



LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES 129 

and forty-five in 1810 ; sixty-six thousand five hun- 
dred and eighty-six inhabitants in 1820, and the 
State one million one hundred and eighty-two 
thousand and twelve in 1860, which grew to three 
million one hundred and six thousand six hundred 
and sixty-five in 1900. Of this population fifty-one 
and four-tenths per cent are males. The population 
of St. Louis, the fourth city in the Union, was fixed 
by the last federal census at five hundred and sev- 
enty-five thousand two hundred and thirty-eight. 
By the same census Kansas City has one hundred 
and sixty-three thousand seven hundred and fifty- 
two inhabitants ; St. Joseph, one hundred and two 
thousand nine hundred and seventy-nine. In 
March, 1804, the double transfer of this district 
was made by Captain Amos Stoddard, who, as the 
agent of France, received it from the Spanish com- 
mandant, Delassus, and almost immediately turned 
it over to the United States. Changing flags was 
not a joyful occasion. The authority of Governor 
William Henry Hariison of the Indiana Territory 
was extended over the newly acquired region, which 
then included what is now known as Missouri, Ar- 
kansas, Iowa, Kansas and eight other Northwestern 
States. Harrison conducted affairs with wisdom, 
integrity and ability. Under the Act of March 3, 
1805, General Wilkinson became governor of the 
** Territory of Louisiana." Wilkinson deserves 
some credit for aiding Lewis and Clark and Lieu- 
tenant Pike, who all had so much to do in maldng 
the extent and value of the great purchase known 
throughout the Union. 



130 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

In 1808, Meriwether Lewis became governor. 
Deep distress over the ruin to trade, caused by fool- 
ish Chinese wall embargoes, led in some measure 
to the suicide of this supersensitive but high type 
historic man. Captain William Clark, the com- 
panion of Captain Lewis, in the famous Missouri 
and Columbia Eiver exploring expedition, and 
brother of the brilliant George Rogers Clark, be- 
came territorial governor in 1812. Until Missouri 
entered the Union as a State this meritorious officer 
contributed greatly to the rapid advancement of the 
whole region. With these auspicious beginnings 
it is not surprising that such broad, national men 
as Thomas H. Benton, Francis P. Blair, Edward 
Bates, and their equals, grew to opulence in re- 
nown. Mr. Bates was Abraham Lincoln 's first de- 
clared choice for the Presidency in 1860 and that 
great man's first selection for his cabinet. The 
State takes its name from the river, the latter 
from two Indian words, Mis and Souri, meaning 
''big muddy." 

AilKANSAS. 

This State came into the Union in 1836. Its area 
is fifty-three thousand eight hundred and fifty 
square miles. Its population in 1900 was one mil- 
lion three hundred and eleven thousand five hun- 
dred and sixty-four. It produced in that year 
eight hundred and twenty-eight thousand eight 
hundred and twenty bales of cotton. The assessed 
value of real estate is one hundred and twenty- 
eight million eighty- four thousand six hundred and 



LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES 131 

sixty-seven dollars. The capital invested in manu- 
facturing and mechanical industries in 1900 was 
thirty-five million nine hundred and sixty thou- 
sand six hundred and forty dollars. The increase 
in this capital from 1880 to 1890 was forty and 
seven-tenths per cent. Not only the gold hunter, 
De Soto, but the indomitable La Salle, the chival- 
rous De Tonty and the truthful historian, Joutel, 
traveled all over this Arkansas wilderness. Three- 
fourths of the State is still a forest. On March 3, 
1805, Upper Louisiana was divided into the Dis- 
trict of New Madrid and Territory of Louisiana. 
The southern part of Missouri and what is now 
Arkansas constituted this ''district." General 
James Wilkinson, appointed by the Prsident as 
governor, and Meigs and Lucas, the two superior 
court judges, constituted the Legislature. In 1806 
the district was called Arkansas and Stephen Wor- 
rel became the first deputy governor. From and 
after 1813 the Legislature of Missouri continued 
creating new counties; but on July 4, 1819, Ar- 
kansas began a separate territorial existence. Pres- 
ident Monroe appointed General James Miller, the 
hero of Lundy's Lane, the first governor. This 
brave soldier filled the chief office with honesty and 
honor until his resignation in 1825. James S. Con- 
way was the first State governor, elected by the 
people in 1836. Honesty and efficiency marked his 
administration. With Governor Conway may be 
classed public men of wider distinction, such as 
Augustus H. Garland. The names of river and 
State come from the French prefix arc and the In- 



132 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

dian Kansas meaning river of the ''bow" Indians, 
of ''smoky water." 

IOWA. 

The lead mines of Dubuque attracted the first 
settlers to Iowa. The name Iowa, derived from 
the Indian Yaiia, "across beyond," was first ap- 
plied to a county east of the Mississippi, which 
formed a part of Michigan TeiTitoiy . The ' ' Iowa 
district" next became western Wisconsin, with a 
population in 1836 of ten thousand five hundred 
and thirtj'^-one. The Act of Congress which took 
effect July 4, 1838, established the Territory of 
Iowa. The inhabitants then numbered twenty-two 
thousand eight hundred and sixty. In May, 1846, 
a territorial convention fixed the limits of Iowa as 
they exist to-day. Congress and the people ap- 
proved. The State was admitted into the Union 
December 28, 1846. The population had reached 
one hundred and two thousand three hundred and 
eighty-eight. In the long contest between sav- 
ages and civilization, civilization won. Governor 
Robert Lucas, twice governor of Ohio and j)resi- 
dent of the convention which renominated Presi- 
dent Jackson, was the first territorial governor. 
The third State governor, James W. Grimes, was 
uniquely and sternly fixed in his anti-slavery and 
temperance principles. Under the patriotic Gov- 
ernor Kirkwood, Iowa furnished seventy-eight 
thousand and fifty-nine men to the Union armies. 
The brainiest and greatest of this State's historic 
men was Justice Samuel H. Miller. By the last 



LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES 133 

census the population of Iowa is two million two 
hundred and thirty-one thousand eight hundred 
and fifty-three. Its area is fifty-six thousand and 
twenty-five square miles. The assessed value of its 
real estate is four hundred and forty million seven 
hundred and sixty-nine thousand nine hundred and 
fifty-two dollars. The gross value of the products 
of its manufacturing and mechanical industries is 
one hundred and sixty-four million six hundred 
and seventeen thousand eight hundred and seventy- 
seven dollars. But its later products in the line of 
strong public men are more noteworthy and rela- 
tively greater. We have only space to name Sec- 
cretaiy of the Treasury Shaw, Secretary of Agri- 
culture Wilson, Senators Allison and Dolliver, 
Speaker Henderson and Representatives Hepburn, 
Cousins and Hull. 

MINNESOTA. 

The fifth of the Louisiana Purchase States en- 
tered the Union May 11, 1858. It was organized 
as a territory in March, 1849. Its area in square 
miles is eighty-three thousand three hundred and 
sixty-five. Its present population is one million 
seven hundred and fifty-one thousand three hun- 
dred and ninety-four. Minneapolis had two hun- 
dred and two thousand seven hundred and eighteen 
inhabitants by the last federal census. St. Paul, 
one hundred and sixty-three thousand and sixty- 
five. The former is nineteenth, and the latter twen- 
ty-third in the relative rank of cities. Louis Hen- 
nepin appears to have first visited the regions em- 



134 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

braced within the State of Minnesota. He de- 
scribed the Falls of Saint xlnthony soon after he 
made the first rough picture of Niagara Falls. 
The enlightened Frontenac sent Perrot to the upper 
Mississippi, where he built in Minnesota Fort Per- 
rot, known also as Fort Le Sueur. In 1819, Gov- 
ernor Lewis Cass of Michigan, with a party num- 
bering forty, traveled through this territory, which 
had lately been placed under his jurisdiction. Alex- 
ander Ramsey was the first governor of the Terri- 
tory of Minnesota. He was the second governor of 
the State and for twelve years a Senator of the 
United States. Cushman K. Davis became gov- 
ernor of Minnesota in January, 1874. Both these 
able men gained the highest distinction in the 
United States Senate. William Windom, as Sen- 
ator and cabinet minister, became widely known. 
General James Shields and Henry M. Rice, this 
progressive State's first chosen Senators in Con- 
gress, were both patriotic and useful public men. 
The State's name means cloudy or slvy-colored 
water. 

KANSAS. 

The route of the Lewis and Clark expedition 
was through Kansas City, Kan., and on to the 
site of Atchison. There was held the first Fourth 
of July celebration ever held in that then wilder- 
ness region. Independence Creek was named by 
these alert explorers. Lieutenant Pike bravely ex- 
plored Kansas, and in November, 1807, discovered 
Pike's Peak. Andrew H. Reeder became the first 



LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES 135 

territorial governor of Kansas in 1854. A census 
of 1855 made the population eight thousand five 
hundred and one. John W. Geary, the third gov- 
ernor, was able and patriotic, hut soon retired from 
the bloody border scenes, out of which not even 
John Brown or Eobert J. Walker emerged with un- 
smirched reputation. Acting Governor Frederick 
P. Stanton did much to make Kansas a free state. 
The Lecompton (pro-slavery) constitution was a 
second time rejected by ten thousand majority. 
Kansas came into the Union January 29, 1861, a 
date since known as "Kansas day." From 
1860 to 1870 the population increased two hun- 
dred and forty per cent. The gross area of 
the State is eighty-two thousand and eighty 
square miles; total population, one million four 
hundred and seventy thousand four hundred 
and ninety-five in 1900 ; assessed value of real es- 
tate, two hundred and twenty-four million nine 
hundred and five thousand two hundred and thirty- 
seven dollars. James M. Harvey was a gallant 
soldier, twice governor of Kansas and Senator of 
the United States. His worth was solid. Of those 
who have since passed away the brilliant John J. 
Ingalls and the widely-esteemed Preston B. Plumb 
were truly national men. 

NEBRASKA. 

Nebraska was organized as a territory in 1854 
and admitted as a State in 1867. Its gross area 
is seventv-seven thousand five hundred and ten 



136 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

square miles. Its population in 1900, one million 
sixty-six thousand three hundred, of which fifty- 
two and nine-tenths per cent are males. Only two 
and five-tenths of the inhabitants are illiterate. 
The population in 1860 was only twent^^-eight 
thousand eight hundred and forty-one. Omaha 
contains one hundred and two thousand five hun- 
dred and fifty-five people and is the thirty-fifth in 
census rank. In 1673, Father Marquette explored 
and partly mapped out this part of ancient 
Louisiana. 

In their outward trip, Lewis and Clark en- 
camped many nights within the limits of Nebraska, 
while making their extraordinary journey of four 
thousand one hundred and thirty-three miles. An 
exj^edition in 1842, under John C. Fremont, passed 
along the Platte Valley. The Monnons, while mov- 
ing to Utah, early traversed this wild region. The 
Territoiy of Nebraska was blessed, or possibly dis- 
tracted, with six governors in seven years. But 
Alvin Saunders of Iowa, sent out by President 
Lincoln, remained in office for six years. The first 
State governor, Daniel Butler, was removed by im- 
peachment. The first State constitution, framed 
in 1871, was rejected by a vote of the people. The 
name comes from hras and ne, Indian for "shal- 
low water." 

COLORADO. 

The measureless wealth of the mines and the 
unsurpassable beauty of nature in Colorado were 
absolutely unknown in 1803. In 1807, Lieutenant 



LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES 137 

Pike, after exploring the headwaters of the prin- 
cii)al rivers, was taken prisoner with his party of 
twenty by a much larger force of Spaniards. The 
Long exploring expedition of 1819-20, brought 
back a careful account of the South Platte region 
and the mountains, especially Long's Peak, justly 
named in honor of that accomplished officer of the 
regular army. 

In 1859 the rush began for the Pike 's Peak gold, 
ihQ Gregoiy and the Jackson mines. Sixty thou- 
sand eager men soon followed in the wake of the 
pioneers. During the years from 1861, when a ter- 
ritorial government was organized, to 1876, when 
Colorado was admitted as a State, mortals seemed 
to be working miracles in a thousand ways. ' ' Stern 
men with empires in their brains" began ''to 
pitch new states as old world men pitch tents." 
From 1880 to 1890 there was five hundred and 
eighteen per cent of inci'ease in capital invested in 
manufacturing and mechanical industries. The 
Talue of the products of these industries reached 
one hundred and two million eight hundred and 
thirty thousand one hundred and thirty-seven dol- 
lars in 1900. The assessed value of real estate now 
exceeds one hundred and seventy-five million dol- 
lars, with a present population of six hundred 
thousand and an area of one hundred and three 
thousand nine hundred and twenty-five square 
miles. Colorado seems destined to become the em- 
pire state of the great Northwest. The State takes 
its name from the River Colorado, the Spanish for 
^' ruddy" or ''red." 



138 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

NORTH DAKOTA 

was admitted as a State in the Union November 
2, 1889, with an area of seventy thousand seven 
hundred and ninety-five miles. North Dakota had 
been organized as a separate territoiy March 2, 
1861. The State had a population in 1890 of one 
hundred and eighty-two thousand seven hundred 
and nineteen. It had increased in 1900 to three 
hundred and nineteen thousand one hundred and 
forty-six. The value of its real estate is placed at 
ninety million nine hundred and forty-two thou- 
sand and nineteen dollars. Lewis and Clark passed 
a winter near the City of Mandan. The old fort 
at Pembina was built by Lord Selkirk. George 
Catlin made a study of the North Dakota Indians 
in 1841. Governor John Miller was the first State 
executive. The name Dakota signifies in the In- 
dian tongue ''many allies or tribes in one." 

SOL'TH DAKOTA 

has an area of seventy-seven thousand six hun- 
dred and fifty square miles. Its population is four 
hundred and one thousand five hundred and sev- 
enty. Its real estate was valued at one hundred 
and thirty-two million six hundred and fifty-two 
thousand eight hundred and fifteen dollars by the 
last census. The Territory' of South Dakota was 
organized March 2, 1861. It was admitted as a 
State November 2, 1889. The University of South 
Dakota, at Vennillion, has a president and four- 



LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES 139 

teen professors. Nicollet was the first writer to 
describe the picturescjue beauty of this region. The 
extreme length of the State is three hundred and 
eighty-six miles and its breadth two hundred and 
forty miles. It is divided into about equal parts 
by the line of the Missouri River. The Cheyenne 
and Grand Rivers are the next in size. Hagerty 
and Child have written entertaining books about 
the promise and fulfillment of the State. 

MONTANA. 

This State has now a population of one and a 
quarter million. It had less than twelve thousand 
inhabitants when organized as a territory in 1864. 
It came into the Union in 1889. The population 
increased two hundred and thirty-seven and five- 
tenths from 1880 to 1890. Montana's enormous 
size, one hundred and forty-six thousand and 
eighty square miles, and its foreshadowed great- 
ness, stimulated the genius of Joaquin Miller to 
writer a monumental history of the State, dis- 
tinctly worthy of subject and author. The great 
Poet of the Sierras says with fitting truth and 
grace: ''Here, great men in the glorious pursuits 
of peace, laid the foundation stones without cement 
of blood, and reared a great State out of material 
fresh from the hand of God. ' ' And this other ut- 
terance was true, in 1803, of the eleventh to enter 
the Union of the Great Treaty States. ' ' But here 
lay Montana, a thousand miles from any sea; a 
wilderness in the very heart of an untrodden wil- 



140 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

derness, with savages on the four sides of her and 
savages in every pass and valley." Xo one can 
condense this best of the State histories. The musi- 
cal name from the French mont suggests the home 
or holy place of the mountains. 

WYOMING. 

Wyoming, an Indian word meaning "broad 
plain," the twelfth and last of the Purchase States, 
which came into the Union in 1890, has now a pop- 
ulation of a hundred thousand and nearly an equal 
number of square miles of territory. Indians and 
wild beasts held possession of this region until 
1806, when white trappers and fur traders became 
primitive commercial travelers. The first author- 
ized explorer was Captain Bonneville. John Col- 
ter, of tlie Lewis and Clark party, was the first 
American to trap and trade in Wyoming. Ezekiel 
Williams and party did splendid pioneer work un- 
der appalling hardships. The Yellowstone Park, 
the Wonderland of America, is worth more than 
we paid for the whole Louisiana empire. 

OKLAHOMA. 

From the domain acquired by the Great treaty 
were cai-ved out twelve large states and two terri- 
tories, soon to become states. Oklahoma has at 
present a population of over four hundred thou- 
sand, although an area of but thirty-nine thousand 
and thirty square miles. The increase of inhab- 
itants in ten vcars has been over five hundred and 



LOUISIANA PURCHASE STATES 141 

forty-four per cent. During tlie same period the 
increase of invested capital lias been more than 
thirty-four hundred and nine per cent. These fig- 
ures tell enough in condensed form. 

The Indian Territory, with an area of thirty-one 
thousand four hundred square miles, can here rea- 
sonably be included, as it is mainly a part of the 
Louisiana Purchase territory. Its complete or- 
ganization as a member of tjie National Union will 
be delayed no longer than the National Legislature 
deems it best for the interests of the entire Nation. 
As the actual Treaty boundary line has never yet 
been topographically marked or defined we are still 
unable to name the exapt area of the purchased 
domain. 

It should be added that about one-third of Min- 
nesota and Colorado, and perhaps one-fifth of 
Wyoming and Montana, are not embraced in the 
Louisiana Purchase. 

From what the historical records contain, the 
conclusion is inevitable that Eobert R. Livingston 
negotiated the Louisiana treaty; that Alexander 
Hamilton was its chief promoter; that Franklin 
and Vergennes were large factors because their 
treaty of peace work of 1782-3 led us to the Mis- 
sissippi, and that Napoleon and Jefferson, being 
in supreme power, officially sanctioned what "the 
empire of circumstances," prior events and other 
men brought about. 






142 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 
SUPPLEMENTAL. 

CKEATOES AND PEESEKVEKS OF THE REPUBLIC. 

The foregoing History of the Louisiana Pur- 
chase has shown who were the far-sighted states- 
men chiefly, not ex officio, instrumental in bringing 
about the enlargement of the Nation. The other 
great men who created and presetted the Repub- 
lic are entitled to at least equal honor and rever- 
ence. America's foremost patriots and benefactors 
are given the following approximate relative rank : 
Washington, Hamilton, Lincoln, Franklin, Marsh- 
all, Webster, Grant, Livingston, Jackson. We lay 
stress only on the preeminence of the group, which 
includes those who have done the most to make the 
Union strong, enduring and great. All these illus- 
trious men either aided to prevent England from 
conquering the Louisiana domain or helped to ac- 
quire or preserve it. Hence the whole story is not 
told unless brief reference is made to their fruitful 
toils and sublime sacrifices. These nine heroes 
of war and of peace best teach patriotism and Love 
of Country, by example. 






"TT^. t< "U '5'U^v./c4 Mp^r^-^A • 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 143 



FOREMOST PATRIOTS AND BENEFAC- 
TORS. 

WASHINGTON. 

The boyhood of George Washington differed not 
from that of other boys until he reached sixteen. 
From that age until he was nineteen, Lord Fairfax 
placed in his manly hands the large ressponsibility 
of surveying all his lands in East and West Vir- 
ginia. In this forest life and mountain air, the 
young surveyor developed a splendid physique and 
a round, tree-trunk body, built for endurance. In 
almost daily correspondence and in frequent per- 
sonal contact with this accomplished Scotch noble- 
man, his manners and character were perfected. 
By reading Sir Matthew Hale 's ' ' Contemplations, ' ' 
and like solid books, his morals were elevated and 
his understanding broadened. Early military re- 
verses, not successes, evolved the qualities of pru- 
dence, caution, patience, foresight and fortitude 
under calamity. Inherited estates, a good mother, 
a fortunate marriage, developed domestic tastes. 
These traits and virtues and a certain solidity, dig- 
nity and weight of character, frequent companions 
of wealth and worth, brought Washington into his 
first broad field of action as Commander-in-Chief. 
Here he struggled, suffered and grew strong. A 
resolute calmness and a resourceful strength un- 



144 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

der disaster, made him the conqueror of Cornwallis 
and the creator of his Country. 

A fitting scene for some immortal limner was 
that at Newburg where, having broken down in 
reading the letter in which he puts aside with 
scorn the kingly crown, he adjusts his spectacles 
and with emotion obsei"^^es: ''You see, my coun- 
tiymen, I have not only grown old but grown blind 
in your service!" His surrendering his commis- 
sion and every symbol of power, immortalized by 
Trumbull, goes beyond anything recorded of Plu- 
tarch's heroes, in self-abnegation. He led the 
armies that gained our independence; presided 
over the convention that made our Constitution, 
and guided the ship of state for eight years on her 
true course, without one dollar of compensation 
for his priceless sendees. To bestow time and 
labors of such immeasurable value, without re- 
ward, is unknown in tlie history of mankind. The 
Gates-Conway cabal, lasting but a year, was pain- 
less compared with the Virginia political combine 
of twenty-four years' duration. It filled the soul 
of the first Executive with sorrowing grief that 
the three chief politicians of his own State should 
conspire to break down his administration that 
each in turn might fill his own high place. He 
trembled lest these ambitious men who impugned 
eveiy act and utterance of his official life, should 
belittle and defame him after death. But pos- 
terity has rightly assigned to the Founder of the 
Republic the stately place of the First Historic 
American ! That other dear immortal, Lincoln, adds 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 145 

his weightiest words to a world 's verdict : ' ' Wash- 
ington is the mightiest name of earth." * * * 
"In solemn awe pronounce the name, and in its 
naked, deathless splendor leave it shining on." 

HAMILTON. 

"I have known all the great men of my time," 
said Talleyrand, * ' I have known Fox, Pitt, Burke, 
Metternich, and, of course, the first Napoleon, but 
I never knew so great a man as Alexander Ham- 
ilton." This many-sided genius was the fruit of 
a common-law marriage openly entered into by 
one of the noble Hamilton family of Scotland and 
a gifted woman of French descent. The precocious 
talents of the child brought him from the Island 
of Nevis to New York to be educated. He was 
broadly educated, but chiefly by himself and by 
"Washington in the finishing school of war, where 
there were few vacations. Prior to being chief and 
confidential secretary at nineteen, on the staff of 
the Great Commander, he had gained distinction 
as patriot-writer, orator and captain of artillery. 
So early as 1774, the boy-patriot proclaimed that 
there was no resource for the colonies but trade 
restriction ''or in a resistance vi et armis." Dur- 
ing this year Jefferson was against independence. 
From the day that Hamilton began to write the 
military correspondence down to the writing of 
The Farewell Address, the labors and services of 
the Chief and his aid, in war and in peace, were 
inseparable. Jointly with Washington, or as the 
originator, the soldier-statesman was behind nearly 

10 



146 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

all that is best and most enduring in our political 
institutions. 

The enumeration of bis specific sendees, wbicb 
were enormous, can only be partial. As chief of 
staff, through adroit diplomacy he induced Gen- 
eral Gates to transfer troops at a critical juncture 
when that ambitious rival of Washington would 
probably have disobeyed a direct order. In 1780, 
seven years before the Constitution under which 
we live to-day was framed, Hamilton wrote on the 
head of a drum a letter to James Duane in which 
are embodied the fundamental piinciples of that 
great charter of our liberties. It is safe to say 
that he did more than any two men to bring about 
the framing of the supreme law and more than any 
three others to secure its ratification. The influ- 
ence of The Federalist arguments and of his tri- 
umph of reason in the Poughkeepsie, New York, 
Convention, was unique and unparalleled. In put- 
ting all the machinery of government in successful 
motion, the first ]\Iinister of Finance was the guid- 
ing and controlling force. He solidified the Union 
by funding the State debts contracted in a common 
cause; by founding our National credit on a rock 
as impregnable as Gibraltar. He provided a sink- 
ing fund for the payment of all debts when con- 
tracted; he created the American system of pro- 
tecting duties; he established post routes and 
handled with high success the mails of the United 
States; he drew the acts organizing the war and 
navy departments on their present basis, in 1798 ; 
he was the first statesman to declare for expansion 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 147 

and to proclaim tliat Louisiana was essential to 
tlie permanence of tlie Union; lie was cliiefly in- 
strumental in suppressing the AVliisky Eebellion 
and in founding a National Bank and West Point 
Academy. The learned President Garfield was 
wont to say that ' ' Hamilton was the greatest man 
that ever trod this continent!" 

LINCOLN. 

Abraham Lincoln was trained in the hard and 
rigid school of adversity, that school which has 
developed more, truly great men than all the uni- 
versities. Unvarying prosperity brings to the sur- 
face conceit, selfishness, self-assertion and all forms 
of self -worship. This son of toil had no early suc- 
cesses, no extraordinary genius, no belles-lettres 
learning, no handsome person, to s^Doil him. His 
school training was limited to eleven months. His 
manual labor and surveying brought him a bare 
living. For his services in the Black Hawk war 
he gained no military glory. From his eight years 
in the State Legislature of Illinois came no distinc- 
tion. His one tenii in Congress brought him no 
renown. His practice at the bar earned him neither 
wealth nor conceded preeminence. His candidacy 
for Vice-President was unsuccessful. His debates 
witli Douglas lifted him into the national arena 
and first clearly demonstrated his wonderful pow- 
ers as a reasoner. He lost the Illinois Senatorship 
through Trumbull, when it was almost within his 
grasp. Lincoln's first unqualified triumph came 
when he was nominated for the Presidency in May, 



148 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

1860. Then followed misrei^resentation and de- 
traction by one of the great political parties, 
throughout the Union. To make his fate sadder 
his constitutional election was the signal for the 
denial of his rightful authority to preside over 
them by one-third of the States, the denial aggra- 
vated by the general defamation of his character. 
When this was followed by widespread sedition, 
privy conspiracy and rebellion, involving the ulti- 
mate loss of a half million lives, is it strange that 
the patriot's face wore an expression of infinite 
sadness ? But the supreme triumphs of misunder- 
stood mortals come after death. Immortality 
means that the deeds of great men are eternally 
bearing fruit. No man ever grew to greatness so 
manifestly fast as this Cliief of State. His first 
inaugural was in persuasive logic great ; the eman- 
cipation proclamation and second inaugural were 
in puii^ose and pathos greater, while the Gettys- 
burg battlefield oration is called the most tenderly 
eloquent ever delivered in honor of the dead. 
Among Lincoln 's most marked qualities were prac- 
tical wisdom ; depth and breadth of sj^npathy for 
humanity ; power as a logician ; unending patience ; 
l^enetration into the motives of men ; an eagerness 
to be as merciful as the safety of the Republic 
would permit. Wliile not perhaps so strenuous an 
executive force as Bismarck or Stanton, as a far- 
seeing, deliberative statesman he surpassed all the 
great men of his time ; as also in moral elevation 
and in wisely promoting the permanent welfare of 
his Country and mankind. He was a moulder of 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 149 

men's opinions and minds, liis own being the mas- 
ter mind of his age. The most popular of the 
Presidents at this time, and it may be for all time, 
are Lincoln and McKinley. The blood of the 
martyrs cements and perpetuates the State. 

FRANKLIN. 

Ben Franklin, as he is familiarly named, was 
born twenty-six years earlier than Washington and 
died in 1790. The philosopher and the hero were 
the first of our large historic men to see the light 
and the first to pass away. Franklin was born 
wise and gained knowledge by dexterity. He was 
self-taught and learned more by the public lamps 
than from the public schools. He was disciplined 
in the world of science, of men and books. Ben- 
jamin, though not a saint, became renowned as a 
moralist, great as a philosopher and still greater 
as a diplomatist. ''Poor Richard" made multi- 
tudes rich Richards. Thrift, economy, sobriety, 
industry, helping one another, and the divine gos- 
pel of toleration, were first broadly preached in 
American by this later Confucius. Franklin 
lured with his kite the lightning from the clouds 
before he helped to wrest the scepter from tyrants. 
His fame had preceded him to Europe when he 
went there as the agent of one, two, then three 
American colonies. He taught Burke, Shelburne 
and Lord Chatham much that they so eloquently 
proclaimed about conciliation and peace with 
America. But the crowning achievements of his 



150 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

life were embraced within five years in Paris, after 
lie had entered his seventy-second year. In 1778, 
the vitally important Treaty of Amit}^ and Alli- 
ance was negotiated. Under the stipulations of 
of this treaty France gave the hard-pressed col- 
onies nearly ten millions of dollars in direct loans, 
besides the aid of fifteen thousand well-equipped 
soldiers and sailors who were subsisted and paid 
by France. The later beneficent Treaty of Peace 
with Great Britain doubled the area of our coun- 
try and brought about the formal recognition of 
our independence the world over. In the solution 
of that liberty problem these two great conven- 
tions of 1778 and 1782 were essential factors. The 
four chief agents in securing the pennanent jjeace 
of 1782-3 were Franklin, Vergennes, for France; 
Lord Shelburne, for England, and Secretary R. 
R, Livingston, under whose instructions the 
American envoys were acting. Adams and Jay 
were serviceable in holding fast with persuasive 
logical force to the favorable terms of the pre- 
liminary treaty. Franklin with infinite tact and 
adroitness had succeeded in his plan of selecting 
Oswald and Hartley for the two principal British 
negotiators. Both were old ]')ersonal friends. Our 
first and greatest diplomatist, with pen and speech, 
continued to serve his Country to the end, and 
acted as moderator or peacemaker in the conven- 
tion-conflicts of 1787. Honored and lamented in 
two hemispheres, he died as he had lived, a philoso- 
pher. The prevailing fiction should not obscure 
the historic fact that Franklin was the oldest and 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 151 

wisest of the five authors of the much-amended 
Independence Declaration of 1776. He was thirt}^- 
seven years older than Jefferson, with a then 
vastly wider range of experience. 

MARSHALL. 

John Marshall, the fourth Chief Justice, is the 
only American to whom the term Great, has been 
habitually applied. How he became the world's 
first jurist, or at least the peer of Mansfield, Eldon 
and Holt, has never been made quite clear. No 
adequate life of Marshall has yet been written. 
But we know that he grew to unexcelled greatness 
while on the Supreme Bench. He was manifestly 
a born logician and jurist. He had by nature the 
judicial temperment; also those qualities of mind 
and habits of analytic concentration which pecu- 
liarly fitted him for the highest judicial station. 
Marshall's participation, and that of his brave 
father, in the hardest fought battles of the Eevo- 
lution taught him that a Union that cost so dearly 
in blood was worth preserving. During the dread- 
ful winter at Valley Forge, a thousand good- 
natured and ill-natured disputes arose between 
officers, which were settled by umpire Marshall 
through- impregnable decisions from which there 
were no successful appeals. This, with his fre- 
quent service on military courts, was his first train- 
ing for his supreme judicial mission. A year 
under the inspiring instruction of Chancellor 
Wythe, with his severe prior studies, prepared him 



152 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

for the bar and for the State Legislature. Such 
advancemeut did he make at the law that in the 
Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1788, when 
our new made Magna Charta was fiercely assailed, 
Madison and Marshall proved more than a match 
for Patrick Henry, George Mason, Dawson, Gray- 
son, Harrison and Monroe, the enemies of ratifica- 
tion. In 1798, the future jurist was sent by Presi- 
dent Adams on a diplomatic mission to France 
with C. C. Pinckney and Elbridge Gerry. It was 
soon discovered that the French officials preferred 
to be liberally bribed before proceeding to discuss 
the peace business. Hence the indignant protest 
voiced by Marshall and Pinckney : ' ' Millions for 
defense; not one cent for tribute." His election 
to Congress, where he gained distinction, was fol- 
lowed by his appointment as Secretary of V>^ar, 
then Secretaiy of State, in 1800. Januaiy 31, 
1801, he was nominated by President Adams and 
unanimously confirmed by the Senate, Chief Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of the United States. 
Making Marshall Chief Justice, John xVdams in 
later years declared, was the proudest act of his 
life. In this place of supreme judicial power John 
Marshall's high purpose was to make this Union a 
''more perfect Union." Hence he put into the 
form of judicial judgments the wise and salu- 
taiy constitutional inteipretations of his own, and 
of Hamilton, as set forth in The Federalist and in 
the latter 's great State papers. He found that all 
save one of the chief and essential powers and 
prerogatives of sovereignty had happily been con- 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 153 

ferred on the Nation, not the State; that the Re- 
public had the right to do what would make it 
strong and great; had the right and the duty to 
protect and to control the governed as individual 
citizens ; that we had one Country, not tliirteen or 
forty-five ; that a part was not politically greater 
than the whole, and that the supreme law, liberty 
and unity, were inseparable, indestructible and 
hence perpetual. 

In public and in private life the Great Chief 
Justice was one of the purest of all historic men. 
He should ever be placed before the youth of all 
lands as the best tyi3e of public and personal 
morality known among the world's greatest intel- 
lectual characters. 

WEBSTER. 

The belief seems to be growing that Daniel 
Webster is the world's first orator. He has long 
been the foremost on this continent. As a large- 
minded statesman he ranks second to Hamilton 
only. As an advocate he has never been excelled, 
in this Country, if indeed equalled. Measured by 
the intellectual and oratorical standards he is the 
greatest of all American Senators. As Secretary 
of State he surpassed in achievement Marshall, 
Marcy, Madison or Jetferson. The grand, god-like, 
seeming-superhuman qualities of the Great Ex- 
pounder of the Constitution have been adequately 
set forth by such able eulogists as Choate, Lodge, 
McCall, Curtis and others. It comes only within 
our province to call to mind some specific services 



154 TEE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

to his Countiy of this broad benefactor. His over- 
whehning refutation in 1830 of the "peaceable 
secession" arguments of Senator Hayne, of South 
Carolina, postponed disunion until the free States 
grew strong enough to preserve the Union. His 
trv'O Bunker Hill monument orations, the address 
at Plymouth, the tear-compelling tenderness of his 
plea in the cause of Dartmouth College, even his 
great legal and constitutional discussions, were 
quickening and stimulating to the patriotism of 
the people the land over. Webster revived the 
broad nationalism of the best of the Fathers, and 
by his enchanting eloquence made the salutary 
supremacy of the Nation a political entity of en- 
during beauty. Sitting at the feet of Washington, 
Hamilton and Marshall, he rehabilitated and 
reclothod their nobly patriotic teachings in robes 
of radiant and inspiring grandeur. Not to yield 
to the Republic a paramount allegiance was to this 
intellectual king of men the one unpardonable 
political sin. Webster perfected a national crim- 
inal code of procedure, a similar State code for 
Louisiana having immortalized Edward Living- 
ston. He materially promoted the construction of 
the Cumberland road and other great National in- 
ternal improvements. He successfully resisted the 
attempts of the followers of Jefferson to curtail 
tlie powers and hence destroy the dignity of the 
Supreme Court. He enforced with resistless logic 
the broad, national view that a Senator was a 
Senator of the United States, not merely a political 
agent of the petty district which sent him. In 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 155 

1832-3, lie powerfully supported President Jack- 
son's Nullification Proclamation and his efficacious 
Force Bill, knowing tliat all bills are ' ' force ' ' bills 
and all laws force laws. In 1842, be negotiated 
the advantageous Maine boundary treaty, proving 
himself more than a match for Lord Asliburton. 
The famous Hulsemann letter did honor to his 
uncompromising Americanism. Notwithstanding 
his indefensible course after his defeat for the 
Whig Presidential nomination in 1852, and liis 
occasional lapses from strict ethical morality, Web- 
ster's fame will reach down the centuries. His 
voice was deep and sonorous; his presence com- 
manding and majestic and the grandeur of his 
whole aspect when in action seemed to suggest the 
Thunderer of Mt. Olympus. He was as Mr. Sum- 
ner called him, ' ' the god-like Daniel. ' ' 

GEANT. 

For doing more in the field than any other Great 
Commander to preserve the existence of the Re- 
public when its life was imperiled. General Grant 
became a lasting benefactor to his Countrj^ and 
mankind. Of course, Thomas, Shennan, Sheridan, 
Meade and thousands of most deserving others, 
rendered invaluable assistance. Grant's campaigns 
were all victorious; there were some repulses but 
no defeats. He had wonderful poise and a mani- 
fest genius for war. He had a bull-terrier tenacity, 
and would never admit that he was beaten. He 
believed in hard front and f^ank fighting more than 



156 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

in strategy or surprises. He moved immediately 
upon the enemy's works and fought it out on the 
chosen line if it took a whole summer. He showed 
unparalleled magnanimity in the hour of final vic- 
tory. A grateful people soon made him their civil 
Chief Magistrate. But eighty electoral votes were 
cast against him. When plans to pay the public 
debt in paper promises to pay, abounded, 
President Grant put an end to all such dishonest 
schemes by one bold utterance in his first inau- 
gural : "To protect the national honor, every dol- 
lar of the Government indebtedness should be 
paid in gold, unless otherwise expressly stipulated 
in the contract. Let it be understood that no 
repudiator of one farthing of our public debt will 
be trusted in public place, and it will go far toward 
strengthening a credit which ought to be the best 
in the world, and will ultimately enable us to re- 
place the debt with bonds bearing less interest than 
we now pay." 

The settlement of the Alabama claims, through 
the Geneva Tribunal of Arbitration, was one of 
Grant's victories of peace which marks an era in 
civilization. A little later the infamous Ku Klux 
clans were by him etfectually suppressed. The 
message vetoing the Inflation bill of 1874 was 
eminently wise and right in the light of to-day. 
During his trip around the world, in 1879, Gen- 
eral Grant was honored by governments and by 
great men as no American has yet been honored. 
His business failures proved that a great soldier 
mav be in business a babe at the bottle. But the 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 157 

integrity of his intentions was never in doubt, not 
even when ring politicians were at one time exer- 
cising too much control over public affairs. His 
candidacy for a third tenii of the Presidency was 
politically a sad mistake. Grant's place in history 
is in the first group of the world's greatest sol- 
diers, which includes Caesar, Alexander, Hannibal, 
Marlborough, Von Moltke, Wellington, Bonaparte 
and Frederick the Great. 

Writing a great book while in the clutches of 
death, which lifted his family to affluence, was 
the bravest and noblest thing a stricken hero ever 
did, in peace or war. His pen dropped from his 
hand only at the call of death ! 

' ' And now in honor 's glorious bed at rest. ' ' 

LIVINGSTON. 

Eobert R. Livingston was the most eminent 
of the Livingston-Manor family that had eight 
historic men in its two Scotch and American 
branches. Janet Livingston, the sister of the 
brainy Robert and the brilliant Edward, be- 
came the wife and widow of General Richard 
Montgomery, that ideal hero who fell lead- 
ing the assault on Quebec on the last day of 
December, 1775, after gallantly capturing St. 
Johns and Montreal. Robert R., when promoted 
from the honorable post of Recorder of New York 
City to the second Continental Congress, became 
in 1776 one of the five authors of the Declaration 
of Independence. The history of this instrument 



158 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

is contained in a few words. The subject was con- 
sidered in and out of Congress for two years. 
Then a committee of five was ai)i)oinLed to draft a 
declaration, which conmiittee discussed the subject 
for five weeks, at the end of which time what the 
declaration should contain was agreed upon. Mr. 
Jefferson was instructed to put the conclusions of 
the committee in rhetorical phrase. But over forty- 
changes were made in the original draft, by the 
committee, and by Congress. The Virginia notion 
that Franklin, Adams, Sherman and Livingston 
neglected or shirked their duties, and that a youth 
of thirty-three did all and became the sole 
"author," is now too preposterous for our alert 
school boys to believe. Three other significant 
sendees to his Country awaited the activities of 
Livingston. In 1781, he was made Secretary of 
Foreign Atfairs by the Congress of the Confedera- 
tion. In this high office he gave the instmctions 
to John Adams which resulted in the important 
I'reaty of Amitj^ and Commerce with the Nether- 
lands of October 8, 1782, and he also formulated 
all the instructions to Franklin, Adams and Jay, 
when in Paris, which brought about the vastly 
more important Treaties of Peace with Great 
Britain of 1782-3. These preliminary and defini- 
tive treaties doubled our national domain, cariying 
our boundaries to the Mississippi and granting to 
us its free navigation. He supported effectively in 
the New York Convention the National Constitu- 
tion. A still larger direct service was perfonned 
by Robert P. Livingston in April, 1803, when he 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 159 

in person negotiated the Louisiana Purcliase 
Treaty, without one line of relevant instructions 
from this side of the ocean. As our Envoy Ex- 
traordinary in France he took instant advantage 
of Bonaparte's willingness to sell all his posses- 
sions on this continent to the Americans. The 
great treaty which added over nine hundred thou- 
sand square miles to the Repuhlic was practically 
the work of three days. It was virtually negotiated 
before Monroe was received by Talleyrand or 
officially recognized by Napoleon. The large im- 
port of this transaction was first grasped and first 
proclaimed by Livingston. Tardy justice is now 
being done the statesman, diplomatist and jurist, 
who administered the oath of office to President 
Washington while first Chancellor of New York, 
in which high office he reached great eminence. 
The State of New York, recognizing his great 
services, has sent his statue in bronze to adorn the 
American Pantheon at Washington, He was a 
noble patron of science, art and literature. His 
timely financial support to Robert Fulton rendered 
steam navigation practically successful. 

JACKSON. 

Without the maintenance of the constitutional 
and territorial integrity of the Republic, the Louis- 
iana Acquisition would have been comparatively 
valueless. Hence a meritorious hero and patriot 
who twice saved the Union from threatened de- 
struction must not be left out of the list of woi-thiest 



160 THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 

Americans. Jackson 's rise from poverty to power 
was even more remarkable than Lincoln's. His 
father died before Andrew was born. A mother in 
l)enury could afford little care. The training re- 
ceived at cock-fights and horse-races was not cal- 
culated to develop the moral virtues, serenitj^ of 
temper or an unvarj'ing regard for the feelings of 
others. Jackson's faults were inherited or were 
fastened upon him by the harshest and roughest 
earl}^ environments. The gradations in his upward 
career were saddler, farmer, lawyer, Public Prose- 
cutor, Representative in Congress, Senator, State 
Judge, Brigadier-General of Volunteers, Major- 
General of Regulars, again United States Senator, 
then President. He seemed not at home or at ease 
in Congress. A cry for help after the horrible 
massacre at Fort Mims aroused all that was noblest 
in Jackson and opened to him his time field. Rais- 
ing over two thousand men while suffering excru- 
ciating pain from wounds, he pursued the red- 
handed savages with relentless fury until he gave 
the Creeks their quietus at Talladega. Command- 
ing the Department of the South in 1814, he held 
Mobile, captured Pensacola, and, on the ever mem- 
orable 8th of January, 1815, defeated General 
Packenham, tlie brother-in-law of Wellington, with 
a loss of three thousand, his own loss being seven 
killed and six wounded. After such a victoiy an 
American could hold up his head. A few months 
before our Capitol had been burned by a small 
British force, the Government had nm away and 
was wandering in the woods on the upper Potomac ; 



PATRIOTS AND BENEFACTORS 161 

there was no army or money and neither could be 
raised. Madison, Monroe and their own chosen 
general, Winder, had wholly lost the confidence of 
the Country. Besides these calamities. New Eng- 
land, tired of the rule of the Virginia dynasty, was 
guilty of the political crime of talldng disunion 
and re-affirming Jefferson 's Kentucky Resolutions 
of 1798. Jackson's victory brought at once inter- 
nal peace and union and removed the disgrace of a 
captured Capital. Again, in 1832, President Jack- 
son crushed nullification in its first stages and 
ended disunion before it could spread. Two pas- 
sages from the immortal Proclamation of Decem- 
ber 10, must be reproduced : * ' I consider, then, the 
power to annul a law of the United States assumed 
by one State, incompatible with the existence of the 
Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the 
Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsis- 
tent with every principle on which it was founded, 
and destructive of the great object for which it was 
formed." Referring to the South Carolina nulli- 
fiers, he adds : ' ' Their object is disunion. But be 
not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force 
is treason. Are you ready to incur its guilt? If 
you are, on the heads of the instigators of the act 
be the dreadful consequences; on their heads be 
the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punish- 
ment." Mr. Jeiferson pronounced General Jack- 
son ' ' a dangerous man. ' ' Very true, but dangerous 
only to the enemies of a more perfect Union. Old 
Hickory loved his Countrj^ as intensely as he loved 
his wife. The sight of an enemy of either would 
fire his wrathful soul. 



GENERAL INDEX. 



Acadians, arrival of, good citizens, 28. 

Adams, John, presidential term, 83; Natchez district, 86; Hol- 
land treaties, 37; peace treaty, 39; suspicions of, 41; 
French depredations. 90, 

Administration, the first, its wisdom, 73; parties formed, 74; 
combines against it, 75. 

Algerine pirates, 75. 

Appalachee Bay, visited by De Soto, 9. 

Arkansas, crossed by De Soto, 10; by De Tonty, 18; State 
described, 130. 

Arrivals from France, supplies, soldiers, priests, nuns, wives, 
23. 

Astor, John Jacob, 25. 

Baltimore, second Lord, 25. 

Bancroft, George, allusion to St. Louis, 32. 

Bellerive, St. Ange de, in command at St. Louis, 31. 

Beaujeu, inordinate conceit, 15; lands wrong place, returns to 
France, 16. 

Bienville, explores Mississippi River, "English Turn," 21; 
sends men and munitions to Spaniards, 22; restored to 
power as governor, 25; defeated by Natchez tribe, retires 
from service, 27. 

Biloxi, Bay of, settlement on, 21; removing stores from, 26. 

Boisbriant, major of fort, 21. 

Bonaparte, sudden resolution to sell Louisiana, motives in 
selling, 117; prophecies, 119; obscurity desirable, 120; 
tries to rue bargain, 124. 

Boone, Daniel, effectual pioneer work, 33. 

Buchanan's station, desperate defense of, 72. 

Burgmont, 27. 

Burke, Edmund, friend of Lord Shelburne, 43. 

Carondelet, governor of Louisiana and West Florida, builds 
fortifications, trades with United States, 81; slave insur- 
rection, grants of land, 82. 
163 



164 GENERAL INDEX 

Charles V. and De Soto, 9. 

Chatham, Earl of, 75. 

Chickasaw Bluff, 10. 

Claiborne, W. C. C. transfer commissioner, 127; without 
capacity, 128. 

Clark, George Rogers, brilliant exploits, 33. 

Colbert, aids La Salle, 13; succeeded by his son, 15. 

Colorado, State of, present conditions, great future, 136. 

Company of the West, succeeds Antony Crozat, 25. 

Creators and Preservers of the Republic, supplement, 142. 

Cortez, conquered Mexico, incorporated invading army, 8. 

Crozat, Antony, advent of, 23; monopoly, 24; trade restric- 
tions, five years of failure, 25. 

Cruzat, governor at St. Louis, 31. 

Cuba, De Soto sails from, Pizarro's daughter governs, 9. 

Dates, three most significant, 117. 

Dauphin Island, a fleet station, 22. 

Definitive Treaty of Peace with Great Britain, ratified by 
Congress, 48. 

De Grasse, 41. 

De Remonville, early friend of La Salle, 19; reported rich 
minerals. 20. 

De Soto, how ambition was fired. 8; his cruelties, supplies 
from Cuba, 9; death and burial, 10. 

De Vaca, accounts of river of gold, 8. 

Du Pratz, 26. 

Embargo, 130. 

England's long-continued hostility, early proofs, 76. 

First cargo of slaves, 26. 

Fontainebleau, treaty of, 28. 

Fort Thuillier, built by Leseuer, abandoned in 1704, 22. 

Fox, C. J., unfriendly to this country, 43. 

Franklin, first treaties, 35; grasps great opportunity. 36; 
sends for Jay and Adams, 38; peace treaty work, 40; 
felicity of diction, 41; state of, 57; at an end, 58; brief 
sketch of most important services, 149. 

French aid to America, 41; later enmity, 76; material assist- 
ance, 150. 

Frontenac, supports La Salle, 13, 17; recalled to France, 15. 

Galvez, becomes governor, 30; brilliant exploits, 32; governor 
of Mexico, character, 49. 



GENERAL INDEX 165 

George III., signs peace treaty, 48; disliked his disloyal sub- 
jects, 75. 

Genet, "Citizen," organized Jacobin clubs, dismissed, 77; ex- 
peditions fail, 81. 

Godoy, despicable character, 77. 

Grant, U. S., character and career of, 155. 

Hammond, wrangling with Jefferson, 69. 

Hamilton, Alexander, saw value of Louisiana first, 45; home 
industries advocated, 46; assures British agent of our 
stability, 63; report of passage of British troops, 67, 68; 
establishes national credit, 74; fears aggression in Mis- 
sissippi region, 84; flat-footed for acquisition of Louis- 
iana, 85; letter to Otis, its purport, 86; favors ratifica- 
tion of Louisiana treaty, 125; career and services of, 145. 

Harrison, Wm. Henry, worthy successor of Wayne, 80. 

Hartley, David, selected by Franklin, signer of definitive 
treaty, 28. 

Hennepin, Louis, first described Niagara Falls, 14; adopted 
name Louisiana, 19. 

Iberville, services, at mouth of Mississippi, on Dauphin 
Island, up great river, 20; finds letter of De Tonty, re- 
turns to France, 21; extensive explorations, 22; Indian 
wars instigated by Spaniards, detained in France, death 
from yellow fever, 23. 

Indian hostilities, defeat of Harmar and St. Clair, treachery 
of Miro, 70; checked by Shelby, 70; massacre of family 
after, 71; heroism at Buchanan's Station, 72; general 
hostility in 1794, 78; burning of Colonel Crawford, 79. 

Indian Territory, area, partly v/ithin treaty limits, 141. 

Iowa, brief history of State, conditions contrasted, statistics, 
132. 

Jackson, Andrew, bearer of good news, 58; victory at New 
Orleans, early admiration of Bonaparte, 94; characteriza- 
tion of, his love of country, 160. 

Jay, John, foresight of, 32; part in treaty of 1782, 39; willing 
to waive free navigation, 49. 

Jean Francois Le Camp, first white child born in Louisiana, 
23. 

Jefferson, T., favors broad expansion, 61; on England's de- 
signs, 65; controversy with Hammond, 69; helps Genet 
organize Jacobin clubs, 77; against Jay treaty, 81; be- 



166 GENERAL INDEX 

comes president, 95; affectionate towards Spain, 98; 
favors war with France, 99; a wild expansionist, for 
peace with France, 100; slurs Napoleon, willing to 
guaranty against acquisition of Louisiana, 102; oblivious 
of events in Paris, 110; vacillations, dazed by treaty, dis- 
approves at first, 122; sub silentio tactics, twin nation 
theory, 125. 

Joliet, descends Mississippi, 11; explores to Arkansas River, 
sketch of, loss of papers, 12. 

Joutel, writings helped to fix Louisiana and other early 
names, 19. 

Kansas, history of State, census figures, 134. 

Lachine Rapids, loss in of Joliet's papers, 12. 

Laclede, founder of St. Louis, 31. 

La Freniere, put to death by O'Reilly, 29. 

La Harpe, 26. 

La Salle, where born, troubles, friends, 13; extensive explora- 
tions, builds "Griffon," reaches Mississippi, descends to 
mouth, 14; names region Louisiana, proclaims Louis XIV 
sovereign, 15, 16; sufferings of colony, foul murder, 16; 
his wrongs, character, 17. 

Law, John, land grant, paper money scheme, mobbed in Paris, 
26; monopoly ended, 27. 

Leseuer, becomes geologist, 21; explores, 22. 

Levee system commenced, 27. 

Lemos, Gayoso de, plotted with Wilkinson, 53; nonsensical 
instructions, 90; death, 91. 

Lincoln, Abraham, characterization of, 147. 

Livingston, R. R., secretary of foreign affairs, 44; instruc- 
tions to peace commissioners, 45; sent to France, 96; for- 
wards secret treaty, 101; sounds France on Florida, im- 
portant dispatch to president, 103; tension over threat- 
ened French occupation, 105; to Talleyrand on Florida, 
107; on Monroe's appointment, 108; negotiating great 
treaty. 111; till midnight with Marbois, 112; without 
powers, 113; makes known treaty in London, forwards it 
to Washington, 114; labors, results, 115, 116; urges 
prompt ratification, 124; prophetic words, 127; sketch of 
career, 157. 

Louis XV transfers Louisiana to Spain, 28. 



GENERAL INDEX 167 

Louisiana, State of, conditions in 1803 and 1900 contrasted, 
brief history, 126. 

Madison, James, for free navigation, 47; favors forbearance, 
58; reverses his politics, 79; to Rufus King, British and 
Spanish wrongs, 97; constitutional guaranty against ac- 
quisition, 102; last dispatch of 1802, 104; to Pinckney, 
106; to Livingston, 106; to Monroe, 107; instructs both 
ministers, 108; abandons west bank, remarkable instruc- 
tions, 109; wants Mississippi for boundary, 121; rupture 
with France predicted, blundering diplomacy, 121; lack 
of statesmanship, 122. 

McGillivray, Alex., suggested Indian union, 50; career, char- 
acter, Robertson's estimate, pension, 50, 51; visits seat of 
government, is pensioned, 63; excessive demands, gro- 
tesque display, 64; uniting all tribes, 71. 

Marquette, reaches Mississippi River by Wisconsin, 11; re- 
ceived by naked chiefs, 12; where born, character, death, 
12; reburial by Indians, statue of, 13. 

Marshall, John, character and services of, 151. 

Minnesota, conditions in 1803 and 1900 contrasted, 133. 

Miro, Estevan, inciting savages against Americans, 49; ab- 
surd proclamation, 151; attends Indian congress, incrim- 
inating Wilkinson, 54; tempting Americans, 78. 

Mississippi River, discoverers of, when and where, 9, 10. 

Missouri, sketch of State, conditions in 1803 and 1900, 128. 

Montana, history by Miller, its area and wealth, 139. 

Monroe, James, opposes Jay treaty, 81; disregards instruc- 
tions, 96; confers with Livingston, 113; reception de- 
layed, 114; Marbois' history, 120; dullness, 125. 

Morenger, nephew of La Salle, killed in quarrel, 16. 

Morris, G., committee service, 46; author of first peace in- 
structions, 47. 

Moscoso, successor of De Soto, 10; return to Spain, 11. 

Narvaez, where born, 7; second governor of Florida, death, 8. 

Natchez, district, revenues of, 51; plans to survey, firm action 
of Ellicott, Guion and Pope, 87; Lemos and Carondelet 
give trouble, 88; Spaniards evacuate, Sargent, first gov- 
ernor, 89. 

Natchez massacre, 25. 

Nebraska, sketch of State, wealth and population, 135. 



168 GENERAL INDEX 

New Orleans, founding of, 26; advance in trade, 30; port 
closed to Americans, 91. 

North Dakota, date of admission, population, wealth, 138. 

Ohio, origin of name, 12; discovery, 14; settlement at 
Marietta, 60. 

Oklahoma, territory of, part of treaty tract, 140. 

O'Reilly, took control at New Orleans, cruelty, 29. 

Oswald, Richard, presented to Vergennes by Franklin, dom- 
inated by him, 38, 40. 

Peace treaties of 1782-3, who made them, 34. 

Penn, William, 25. 

Perier, Governor, began levees, 27. 

Perez, Manuel, governor at St. Louis, 60. 

Peru, conquest of, 8. 

Piernas, in charge at St. Louis, 31. 

Pinckney, Thomas, temper good; service great, 69. 

Pitt, William, tries to influence Spain, 67; hostile to this 
country, 75. 

Pontiac, killing of, 31. 

Population of Lower Louisiana in 1788, of Upper Louisiana, 
59; of Kentucky and Tennessee, 60; of Upper Louisiana 
in 1799, 91. 

Ratification of Louisiana treaty, 125. 

Revolutionary generals to whom we owe most, 35. 

Robertson, James, services of, 33; made brigadier-general, 63; 
his noble words, 72; drove off Indians, 73; victory over 
Chickamaugas, 80. 

Rochambeau, 41. 

Roosevelt, Theodore, on Gouverneur Morris, 47; on Jefferson. 
123. 

San Ildefonso, treaty of, 92, 98. 

Sauvol, placed in command, governor, 21; early death, 22. 

Seignelay, succeeds Colbert, an expedition for La Salle, 15. 

Sevier, John, great services, 33; work in Watauga region, 56; 
general of military district, 63; nephews killed, 72. 

Shelburne, Lord, negotiations for peace, 38; friend of Amer- 
ica, hated by George III, 42; driven from office, 43; 
Lecky's estimate of him, 44; retirement, 75. 

Slaves, first cargo of, 26. 

South Dakota, area, admission to Union, population, 138. 

Spain, rejects construction of peace treaty, holds Natchez 



GENERAL INDEX 169 

district, 49; exactions, indignation of westerners, 52; 
denies free navigation, 58; letter from Madrid, 69; 
hostility, snubbed ministers, 78. 

Spaniards, climax of blindness, 8. 

St. Charles, 31. 

St. Denis, joins colony, explores extensively, 22. 

St. Louis, lovely site of, 12; founded, 31; chief place, floods 
in, 60; population in 1799, 91. 

Sugar cane introduced into Louisiana, first sugar mill, 28. 

Supplement, patriots and benefactors, 142. 

Texas, claims to by French, 26. 

Tonty, Henry de, searches for La Salle, 18; bark letter, death 
at Mobile, 19. 

Trinity River, Texas, scene of La Salle's murder, 16. 

Trudeau, Zenon, fur trading extended, 93. 

Tuscany ceded to Spain, 98. 

Ulloa, sent out from Spain, 28. 

Unzaga, became governor, mild administration, 30. 

Upper Louisiana, materials lacking for history, Ex-Senator 
Henderson's views, 91; exempt from early political 
strifes, 93. 

Valladolid, where Narvaez was born, 7. 

Velasquez, conquered Cuba, 7. 

Vergennes, Count de, best foreign friend, 35; confidential 
with Fi'anklin, 38; character of, 40; made treaty with 
England, final support of our extreme treaty claims, 41; 
loyal and true, case likened to that of Schley, 42; latest 
French estimate, 42; rejoiced over peace, 48; feeble suc- 
cessors, 77. 

Virginia political combine, war on first administration, 79. 

Washington, military successes, 35; interest in Mississippi 
lands, 46; on coercion, 57; tried to make peace with the 
Creek Indians, 63; advises Spain to be wise and liberal, 
66; war made on him by ring politicians, 79; his political 
Valley Forge, 80; allusion to Mississippi in farewell ad- 
dress, 83; nationalism, 84; exclamations at his death, 93; 
characterization of, 143. 

Washita, massacre at, 27. 

Wayne, Anthony, warrior who never sleeps, 70; victory at 
Fallen Timbers, treaty of Greenville, 74. 

Webster, Daniel, characterization of, 153. 



170 GENERAL INDEX 

Wilkinson, James, career, intrigue with Miro, 53; treachery, 

54; letters to Miro, 55; fate under a strict rule, 56; 

forced to the wall, 65; treasonable correspondence, 71; 

transfer commissioner, 127; Laussat's estimate of him, 

128; governor of Arkansas district, 131. 
Wyoming, brief sketch of, 140. 
Yazoo River, discovered by De Soto, 10. 
Yazoo, massacre at, 27. 
Yorktown, assault on, 41. 



s? 26 1902 



1 COPY on. Tor*T n»v. 

SEP. 26 1902 



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